


We Part Like Rivers

by stickman



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Graduate School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Developing Relationship, F/M, Getting Together, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Misunderstandings, Non-Linear Narrative, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2018-09-27 02:33:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 43,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9946292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stickman/pseuds/stickman
Summary: Sometimes good things can happen in only a year. The problem is, then, what do you do when the year is over?Takashi "Shiro" Shirogane is 28, in his last year of a Ph.D. in history after his discharge from the army; he's burnt-out, aching. He's applying for jobs he doesn't feel qualified for and almost certainly won't get, with the way the academic job market is these days. He's thinking about his future and all he sees is the darkness of space, spreading out before him.And then there's Keith, 24, a senior in history, struggling to keep his focus on the future instead of the past; Lance, 22, a senior in biology with a lot of debt and doubt on his shoulders; Hunk, 23, a senior in mechanical engineering, the first in his family to go to college; Pidge, 19, a junior in computer engineering and kind of spectacularly bad at being left to their own devices; and Allura, 30, in her last year of a Ph.D. in physics, apparently the only one whose life isn't falling apart.[a graduate school & university AU, in which everyone is stressed but trying their best]--ON HIATUS--





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, Voltron fandom. This is a thing I've been working on for a while now and I've been looking forward to sharing it with you. It's my first venture into writing for this fandom; I've read some really great things here and I hope to be able to give something back, both to the other writers/artists working on things and to this dumb show about robot cats which has somehow taken over a large part of my life. (I kid, it's not dumb, I love it.) Title is from the song "Twilight" by Thriving Ivory.
> 
> The main part of this story takes place over the course of one year (indicated as "this year" in section headings), but there will be moments where things go back in the past; I've tried to make things clear without tying sections to actual dates (the present timeline isn't exactly 2017), but if it gets too confusing please let me know & I'll try to clarify. The verb tense is also another indicator of whether we're in the present or the past. Since this is a story set at a university, "year" means "school year" (the American one, which starts in August and ends in May, for the most part).
> 
> A byproduct of me being a Ph.D. candidate is that I think about school a lot, even when thinking about Voltron, and so this story started to take shape in post-it notes and marginalia and it's definitely a work in progress, updates will be slow, but I want to write it. Actually, it's keeping me grounded while writing my dissertation. I hope that, whether or not you're currently overwhelmed by school, you'll enjoy it. If you read it and want to leave me your thoughts, or questions, or anything in comments below, that would be amazing. Thanks.

CHAPTER ONE

 

**[August—fall semester, this year]**

It's the end of August, two in the morning, and Shiro can't sleep. He's lying on the floor of his apartment in front of the window fan, books stacked all around him, the light from his desk-lamp bouncing off the cracks in the paint on the far wall. Has it really been five years already? Five years that he's spent here, in this place? The worn wooden floor is cool under his back. There's a spider tracking across his ceiling, too high to reach. August is always the month for spiders. This is the longest he's lived in one place since he was a teenager. Now he's twenty-eight. When he thinks about it that way it makes his arm ache.

The fall semester of his final year starts tomorrow, technically today. And after that, what? Doing a Ph.D. in history had sounded better than going aimlessly back to Toronto, where he didn't even have a home anymore, after the armed forces discharged him—five to six years of job security, even if barely above minimum wage, plus health insurance were enough to get him to accept the offer of admission when it came. It was a better offer than he had anywhere else. Moving here had been less about hope for the future and more about desperation, really. And now his time is running out. It's as simple as that. Now he's applying for jobs he doesn't feel qualified for and almost certainly won't get, with the way the academic job market is these days. Now he's thinking about his future and all he sees is the darkness of space, spreading out before him.

Shiro sighs and pushes himself up off the floor. He needs to get it together. He needs to wash up, brush his teeth, get some sleep before morning properly comes. He has a brand new class of first-years to teach at ten a.m. and has to find it in himself, somehow, to be enthusiastic about that. His back is stiff as he steps into the bathroom; he stretches his arms out and reminds himself of yet another thing he should be doing. When he stopped going to physical therapy years ago he'd picked back up his childhood martial arts training, even started teaching a couple of classes, but lately there hasn't been time for that. There would be time, he thinks, if he could get it together and just be better. Be more on top of things, more prepared, more driven. If only he wasn't so exhausted all the time. But there's a strategy behind that, too, that makes it hard to shake—the dreams that come now, when they do come, are too brief to cause much trouble.

 *

Ever since basic training Shiro has awoken at dawn without an alarm and this morning is no different, never mind that he closed his eyes only a few hours ago. Sometimes he can roll over, press his face into the pillow and go back to sleep. This isn't one of those mornings. Early light is barely breaking through the clouds when he steps into his kitchen to make coffee. He doesn't sleep with the prosthetic on and there's no point attaching it before he's showered so Shiro goes through the motions one-handed, using his hip to close the drawer after him. While the coffee percolates he does a couple of stretches on the kitchen floor, forces himself through a couple one-armed push-ups just to prove that he still can. Doesn't want Keith to give him a hard time for having lost his edge—he hasn't, of course, but can never quite manage the requisite mindset during sparring and so these days Keith always wins. Somehow the gym mats don't carry the same sense of danger that got him through Afghanistan more or less intact. It's been a while since they sparred, actually. When he can spare a moment to think about it, Shiro feels bad for leaving Keith without a partner, particularly since he can tell it bothers his friend more than he lets on. They had something of an argument about it the other day, inasmuch as Keith ever argues beyond glaring at him. “Take better care of yourself, you idiot,” is basically what it came down to. Somewhat embarrassing to be told that by your own undergraduate research assistant.

Shiro's showered, caffeinated, dressed, and out the door before eight. These days he never has much of an appetite for breakfast. The early morning haze has burnt off and he forces himself to take the walk up to campus slowly, warm even in a short-sleeved shirt. He always likes to get the awkward questions about his arm out of the way on the first day, though surprisingly eighteen-year-olds these days have a fair amount of tact. Often he's the one left feeling awkward when they address as him as “Professor Shirogane,” a title that in his mind will always belong to his father. He teaches an intro seminar on Japanese history, only loosely related to his dissertation, but it's interesting to talk about. His parents left Japan in the 1970s and ended up in Canada, where Shiro was born and grew up; he's been back overseas a few times, visiting various relatives or, more recently, doing research for his project. It's been helpful, in a strange way, to lecture on distant aspects of his heritage to a classroom of wide-eyed first-years. It's given him a sense of some of the family he's lost over the years.

So he meets his new students, teaches his first day, runs errands around campus while avoiding his advisors, to whom he owes any number of emails. He doesn't cross paths with Keith and can't decide if that's a good thing or not—Keith is a senior by this point and surely busy with his own first day, but it would have been nice to see a friendly face. For a given definition of friendly, that is. Even after three years getting to know him, Shiro still has to admit that Keith looks surly eighty percent of the time. Personally he finds it kind of hilarious but word around the department is that Keith frightens the first-years. Every time Shiro hears this repeated he finds himself contemplating asking Keith to come give a guest lecture for his course, just to see what would happen. This year is his last chance. Maybe he'll finally do it.

Shiro is still thinking about Keith when he gets back to his apartment and begins unloading his bag—he should text him and apologise for the other day. It was probably his fault, their argument. He can't deny that Keith had a point. A slip of paper falls out when Shiro empties the last pocket of his bag and he just manages to catch it before it hits the floor. It's bright pink, definitely not anything he recognises. There's another one scrunched into the corner of the pocket and Shiro tugs it out, smooths it flat. They're vouchers for free classes at a local yoga studio. Keith, again. He'd been pestering Shiro about some yoga class that his friend Lance had dragged him to, trying to get Shiro to give it a try. Promising that it would help the stiffness in his muscles, the ache across his shoulders that never quite goes away, the forced straight posture he can't lose. Shiro had shrugged off the offer and changed the subject but Keith must have stuffed these in his bag when he wasn't looking.

The papers stay on his kitchen table while he changes into sweats, cooks dinner, absently reads a book on European politics in the first half of the 20th century. As much as he tries not to look at them they're just so bright. They keep drawing his eye. Eventually he leaves to move to his desk and yet “out of sight, out of mind” doesn't prove true. Then Keith texts him, some emoji that Shiro isn't certain how to read, and he caves. He sends Keith a photo of the crumpled vouchers and writes, “Fine, I'll go. Happy?” Almost immediately, Keith replies: “Ecstatic,” followed up by, “Lance says to send photographic proof.” Shiro laughs and doesn't bother replying. He's definitely not going to send photos, to Keith or Lance. Or anyone. He's going to go, and probably make a fool of himself, but at least it will appease his friend. And then he's going to get back to work and not think about it anymore.

 

 

**[December—fall semester, three years ago]**

Keith showed up to the gym one night in early December, finals week, when it was snowing like mad. Shiro had just finished teaching a youth karate class for the local community and was beset by a gang of hyperactive six-year-olds when he saw this college kid step hesitantly inside and shake the snow from his dark hair. It took a while to get all the children and their parents squared away but when the chaos died down, he was still there. Shiro sighed and grabbed his water bottle before heading over.

“Hey,” he said. “We're actually not holding any more classes today. Were you looking to join?”

“Uh, not really,” the college kid said, shifting his footing. “Just looking for a place to train. I thought it might be empty here.” He shrugged. “I can leave.”

Shiro considered him for a moment—slight build, but muscular. A tiredness around his eyes, hair grown long in the back, red winter jacket, arms crossed over his chest. Standing there with an air of tension, barely contained. “I can't let you have the space to yourself. I'm responsible for locking up tonight.”

“Fine,” the kid sighed and turned to go.

“But, you know, “Shiro said, stopping him, “I could train with you. If you want.”

“Karate's not really my style these days. No offense.”

“What do you do, then?”

“Tae Kwon Do. More or less.” Keith paused, and then admitted, “Less.”

Shiro smiled. “So I'm guessing you're not actually with the university club then. Well, it's been a few years, and my mind's still stuck in kids' class mode, but let's see what happens.” He gestured towards the mats. “Leave your boots over by the door. You can call me Shiro, by the way. What's your name?”

“Keith Kogane.”

“Nice to meet you, Keith. If you beat me and ever want a job teaching small children to fight, let me know. I'm getting exhausted.” Stepping onto the mats, Shiro took off his belt and jacket and set them aside. He stretched while waiting for Keith, t-shirt damp with sweat as he pulled his right arm across his chest. When Keith stepped up onto the mats Shiro caught him staring and met his gaze. Waited. Keith said nothing, just took up position to spar.

Despite Shiro's best plans to take it easy on the kid, he found himself on the defensive, circling around while Keith tested his reflexes. After barely catching a kick on his forearm before Keith's foot met his nose Shiro huffed and changed his stance, pushing into offense. He ducked under Keith's roundhouse kick and spun behind him, reached out and tapped him on the back of the neck. When Keith looked affronted—fairly so, since Shiro definitely wasn't following typical Tae Kwon Do sparring conduct any more—Shiro just smiled and said, “You said less, right? So loosen up. Show me what you can really do.”

“If that's what you want,” Keith said, and that was the first time Shiro ever saw him smile. His eyes tightened, his stance shifted, and then before Shiro even saw what happened Keith had him flipped over and pinned to the mat.

After a few rounds Shiro had managed to score once or twice but it was clear that he spent more time hauling around small children in uniform than actually training himself these days. He pushed up off the mat and put his hand out to Keith. “Good match,” he said. “Where have you trained?”

“Oh, you know,” Keith said, “here and there. You're good. Once you stopped holding back.”

“You could tell?”

“Hmph. Your face gave it away.” Keith brushed off his pants and eyed Shiro's arm again, measuring him up. “You're with the university?” he asked, clearly skeptical.

“Grad student. You?”

“. . . First-year.”

“Really? I wouldn't have guessed. You seem . . .”

“Old?”

“Well-adjusted, I was going to say. Exhausted, too, but it's finals week. Older than my last students, that's for sure.”

“I took some time off before coming here,” Keith said and Shiro was surprised to see some colour rising to his cheeks.

“Keith, my last students were six. I should hope you look older than them.” Shiro laughed, picked up his towel from the bench and rubbed at the back of his neck. “How are you liking it here?”

Something like a scowl crossed Keith's face before he said, “It's fine.”

“What are you studying?”

“I don't know. I'm not really . . . that great at anything besides fighting.”

“Not true,” Shiro said.

“How do you know? We just met. You don't know me.”

“I can tell. Hey, why don't you take my class next semester?”

“You teach?”

“I can teach you a thing or too,” Shiro joked, and Keith rolled his eyes. “I teach first-year seminars in the history department. Look me up.”

And that's how they met, and kept meeting—Keith would show up at a time when one of Shiro's martial arts classes was ending, they'd spar and talk a bit, then part ways until the next time. Keith knew what he was doing, that much was clear, and Shiro quietly made a copy of his keys and left them in Keith's jacket pocket one night. Winter break came and went quietly and the new semester started; Shiro was in his third year of the program, teaching a seminar on military history, and who should appear in his class but Keith, seated at the back of the room and quietly appraising throughout the lecture.

Shiro went up to him afterwards, after all the other kids had cleared out. “Well?” he asked.

“I guess you can teach after all,” Keith said, and Shiro reached out and shoved at him. Either the casual touch or the classroom setting caught Keith off guard, and he didn't dodge in time. Shiro raised an eyebrow.

“That's one-nothing, to me.”

“I'll get you back for it.”

“Oh, I'm sure you will.” Shiro laughed, and then paused a moment. “Keith,” he said, “you know I can't treat you any differently during class. It wouldn't be fair to the others.”

“No, I know.”

“Just as long as you understand.”

“Yeah, well, you can make it up to me afterwards, or something,” Keith mumbled. Shiro clapped him on the shoulder, and ushered him out of the room.

“Count on it,” he said. “I'll make it two-nothing in no time.”

Keith made an indignant noise. “Just try it. And I'm not calling you Professor Shirogane, by the way. Though at least now I know your full name.”

“You didn't know it before? And you have to. It's protocol.”

“You never fully introduced yourself! 'Call me Shiro,' ” Keith huffed, in a passable imitation of Shiro's deeper voice. “How was I supposed to know?”

“You're a smart kid. I thought you'd figure it out.”

“Still not calling you that.”

“Well no one calls me Takashi, so you're out of options. One of these days you'll cave.”

“Try me,” Keith said, and so it became something of a bet between the two of them. Keith would go on to avoid addressing Shiro outright in any way possible during class—he called this being smart. Shiro called it cheating, but continued to spar with him, occasionally taking him out afterwards for jja jang myun at a hole-in-the-wall place downtown where Keith would scarf down noodles while Shiro watched him and remembered being young and hungry. And that's how the year went on.

 

 

**[August—fall semester, this year]**

Keith tucks away his phone with a smile. He's lounging across their tiny couch while Lance, his roommate, is sprawled on the floor playing an intense round of Wipeout 64 on their battered Nintendo system. “Shiro didn't reply to your request,” Keith tells him. Lance twists and looks up at Keith, upside down. The game's late-nineties techno music is loud in the background.

“So no photos?” he asks.

“Probably not,” Keith says, and nudges Lance with his foot. “Let me have a turn.”

“No way, you'll beat my high score!”

“Lance, you can't win just by not letting anyone else play.”

“Why not?”

“Because . . .” Keith frowns down at him. “That's stupid.”

“You're stupid,” Lance says, and sticks out his tounge while leaning hard on the hand-break as his ship streaks around a turn and into the final stretch of the course.

“We're not having this argument.” Keith drops a pillow on Lance's head and swipes the controller while his roommate is distracted. Lance shoves him over but Keith keeps playing, and in another lap he's won the race. “New lap record,” the game announces, and Keith sits back up and grins at Lance.

“Cheater,” Lance tells him, but picks up the second controller and sets them up for a race against each other, so he must not be too upset.

Keith still feels like he's learning—when to push, when to back off, when it's all right to really be himself. When he first met Lance they fought constantly, and Keith was about ninety percent certain that Lance hated him; they lived on the same floor in the first-year dorms and Lance made everything into a challenge, or a race, and Keith was sick of it. He wanted to keep his head down, do his work, get his degree. Get out. Lance made that impossible, always loud, always inviting people over, constantly making friends. Keith didn't know how to make friends. Every friend he has these days—and really, that's about two people—just sort of took him in. As one takes in a stray dog.

Sitting there on the floor, next to his outgoing friend who can smile and flirt with anyone like it's second nature, Keith is very aware that he's the odd one out. One of the good things about martial arts is that it teaches contact alongside control. So whereas Keith from five years ago would've fought Lance with his fists, now he can just thwack him with a pillow and they move on with their lives. He has learned not to think so much about casual touches, doesn't jump anymore whenever Lance throws an arm over his shoulders, doesn't flinch when he has to shake someone's hand upon meeting them. Which is a good thing, considering that he's graduating this year—they both are, him and Lance—and going on the job market, which means interviews and strangers and endless small talk. Keith is fairly confident he can make it through that without fighting anyone.

Lance wins the first three races while Keith is distracted with his thoughts, and then of course he has to defend his honour so he clears his head and trounces Lance, hitting him with every weapon in his arsenal as they fly across the course. He's never played videogames with anyone as loud as Lance before; it's a wonder their neighbours don't tell them off more often. Lance is dramatic, always needing to make the grand gesture, throwing himself back into the pillows as if he's dying when he loses a single race or falls off the record pace. There was a time when those antics would've driven Keith crazy but now he just watches, maybe even lets himself smile a bit, and offers a conciliatory second round.

 *

They've been sharing an apartment for a year now, since they were juniors and out of campus housing. As with most of the good things in Keith's life, it just sort of happened one day. Their place is tiny, two closet-sized bedrooms attached to an open common room and kitchen, plus a bathroom that you can stand in and touch all the walls at once. It's in slightly better repair than Shiro's apartment, Keith knows, and yet he still finds himself swearing whenever he sets something down on a countertop only for it to roll off and end up on the slanted floor. Eggs. Eggs are the worst for that. Nothing in this city—at least, within a student budget—is built with any kind of surety. If you asked Keith three years ago whether he could live with Lance without either of them winding up in a dumpster come morning, he would've said no, emphatically. But it works for them. They are each other's right kind of company, just enough pestering to keep their spirits up while, as Keith has discovered, underneath Lance's bravado is insecurity, and more than either of those is kindness. That's it, really; Lance is kind. Keith doesn't have any such delusions about himself, no matter how often Lance tells him he's a good friend. Maybe he is that, but it's only out of selfishness. No, Lance is the kind one between the two of them. Keith is the one who looks out for himself and his own, and fuck everyone else.

The point is that they work well together. They live well together. Lance cooks heaps of Cuban food all the time and is always trying to feed Keith, and Keith is kind of obsessive about cleaning, learned long ago how to keep a house running—between the two of them, their apartment has become a home. Small, and temporary, especially these days with graduation looming, but home nonetheless. If Keith thinks about that too long he doesn't know what to do, so these days mostly he tries to live while pretending that he's not going to have to leave this all behind in nine months. And mostly, it works.

There are other things he tries to live without thinking about, too—the way Lance's hair curls at the ends when it's damp from a shower, the warm sound of his laughter, how long his legs look in those ridiculous pajama pants. How many things Keith wants to say to him but can't find words for. Those thoughts don't help anyone. They won't get Keith a job, they won't get him into graduate school, they won't ensure him a future. So he clears his mind by cleaning, or he goes for a run, or he badgers Shiro into sparring with him and doesn't hold back so when he comes back home bruised and sweaty and aching he can focus on sensation instead of thought—can go through the motions, be mostly a regular person like anyone else, and ignore all the rest. Or, these days, he goes to yoga, which is kind of counterintuitive because it involves Lance in very tight pants being all kinds of flexible in his peripheral vision, but Keith goes and he focuses on his breathing, on the flow of the poses, and somehow it helps. It grounds him. Lance's flushed face as they walk home together afterwards is an added bonus, a small distraction that Keith allows himself to look at and think about, and remember. He'll always remember this.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

 

**[February—spring semester, two years ago]**

Lance shivered and hunched his shoulders against the wind as he ducked around the corner and into the café. The engineering quad wasn't a far walk from his usual haunt in the biology department but February was proving to be the absolute worst month for weather—always cold, always wet, always windy. February made Lance question why he ever thought going to college in the north was a good idea because damn, he really missed the sun.

The warm air from the café hit him as soon as he stepped inside and he scanned the room, looking for an empty table. It wasn't that the coffee was particularly cheap here, or the food any different than elsewhere on campus; there was just something about the space that Lance liked. It had been built as a sort of addition to one of the older buildings, all glass and steel attached to the hundred-year-old stone outer walls of the neighbouring lecture hall. Even on days as grey and wet as this one, it still managed to be bright inside, which was more than could be said for any of the lounge spaces in the bio buildings. Those were always somehow musty, no matter what the season. Or, like that one hall he accidentally walked through once and never again, filled with taxidermied birds. Nope. He had sort of accepted the smell by this point—as a sophomore he's got many more days to spend within those outdated walls—but it didn't mean he had to live there every minute of every day.

Lance ordered his usual small black coffee at the counter from a barista he'd seen before but never actually spoken to, and spread his things across a table near the outer glass wall while he waited. He had about two hours to kill before he had to be back in the lab. The barista called his name and Lance hopped up to fetch his drink, took it with a quick, “Thanks, man.” It wasn't until he was back at his table with an anatomy textbook open in front of him that he took a sip and had to close his eyes for a second because of how good it was. Definitely not black coffee. Lance looked around furtively, caught the barista's eye, and raised an eyebrow. The guy smiled back at him and shook his head before turning to deal with the line of customers who had appeared suddenly; a class must have just let out from one of the rooms nearby. Lance toasted him with the cup and went back to his book, but glanced up from time to time in case the guy had a free moment. The café stayed busy, though, and Lance had an exam to review for, so after a few minutes he gave up and went back to studying, now fueled by probably the best latte he'd ever tasted.

When someone slid into the seat across from him Lance looked up, startled, and found the barista smiling back at him. “Hey,” the barista said. “How's it going?”

“Dude,” said Lance. “You are amazing. Thank you.”

“You come here all the time and always order the same thing, and never look happy about it. I guess I just wanted to see you enjoy it. You don't look like a black coffee kind of guy.”

Lance smiled back at him and rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “Ah, you know,” he said, gesturing with his cup. “It gets the job done. But this? This, I enjoy.”

“Good. You can call me Hunk, by the way. Hunk Garett.”

“I'm Lance McClain. Nice to meet you. And seriously, thank you.”

“Don't mention it. I mean, really, don't . . . because I don't think they'd fire me, but you never know, right?” Hunk glanced around nervously.

“Hey, I'm good at keeping secrets,” Lance said, and reached out to pat him on the shoulder. A very firm shoulder. “Hunk, huh? Hmm. Yeah, I can see it. So what year are you?”

“Sophomore,” he said. “Mechanical engineering.”

“I'm in bio,” said Lance. “Also a sophomore. Also going to fail my exam in . . .” Lance checked his watch. “Thirty-two minutes. Joy.”

“You'll be fine!”

“I mean,” Lance shrugged, “depends on your definition of 'fine.' If we're talking like, damn, you're _fine_ , then, yes. Yes.”

Hunk laughed. “Not what I meant.”

“In that case, no, I'm going to fail. There are probably three-hundred people in my lecture and it's at eight in the morning, I've slept through it at least twice a week. Why do we do this, Hunk?”

“Because we want jobs? Paychecks? Independence from our parents?”

“Oh. Right.” Lance's face fell a little and he took a sip of his latte to hide it. If Hunk noticed, he didn't say anything, but didn't exactly change the topic either.

“Where are you from?”

“Someplace a lot warmer than here, that's for sure,” Lance said, lifting his gaze. “Otherwise known as Florida.”

“Yeah, I will never get used to this weather. I came here from Hawaii. I didn't even own more than two pairs of pants before last year.” Hunk's good humour was infectious; Lance found himself laughing too as they swapped stories about all the things they hadn't seen here in months: sunshine, greenery, blue skies. Dogs; Hunk had an aging, much-beloved golden retriever called Sandy. A good night's sleep. College, it turned out, did not joke around with the workload, no matter what your major. Not to mention both of them working on-campus jobs, Hunk in the café and Lance as a lifeguard at the campus pool.

It turned out that Hunk, though only a sophomore, was already living off-campus in his own apartment—well, he had a roommate, apparently, some first-year kid with family money—mostly because he missed having a kitchen. His parents owned a restaurant back home; he'd grown up always underfoot. And he liked looking after people, mostly by feeding them, so now that Lance had accepted a fancy coffee the logical next step was dinner one night, right? Right. Lance put his number into Hunk's phone before trudging off to take his exam. If he was going to fail, he might as well have food to look forward to.

*

Financial independence. That was the thing. Lance was the middle child of five, or strictly biologically speaking, the youngest of his two siblings, and older than both his step-siblings combined. His parents worked hard and his financial aid was good but that didn't mean college was inexpensive. Particularly not this college. He had to succeed here, had to graduate with honours and good job prospects, or a funded graduate program. Even though he was only a sophomore he couldn't let his grades slip, not even on one exam. Last semester he'd only managed a B+ in Oceanography, which was absurd; Lance grew up on the ocean, he knew everything there was to know about it. His blood was basically salt water. But the exams for that course were practically incomprehensible and only held at night, and the professor taught every morning lecture by reading word-for-word off of slides. And then, to top it off, the T.A. was some smarmy upperclassman who mocked them in tutorials and graded exams with what had to be the reddest pen he could possibly find, which Lance saw as some kind of personal insult. So yeah, it wasn't great, and he should probably have been happy he even made a B+, but it still meant he needed to work that much harder now.

Lance had sworn, when he accepted the admissions offer here, that his parents wouldn't have to pay a cent. They had enough to worry about, what with his little brother and sister, and his older sister getting married soon; plus, they were old, they deserved to relax. To retire soon, and have enough to live comfortably. Lifeguarding was actually one of the higher paid jobs on campus, since you needed a whole list of qualifications and certifications, but even so it was only slightly more than minimum wage. His student loans were higher this year, too. Next semester, Lance would be a junior, and probably out of the lottery for campus housing, so that meant rent and utilities and food, an entirely new budget to work out. A roommate to find—and that was a whole other issue. Who on earth could he ask? It wasn't that Lance didn't have friends. He did, lots of them. But it would be different, living with a person. You'd have to agree on everything, or at least know how to compromise. And for some reason people looked at Lance—easygoing Lance, all smiles, willing and able to talk to anyone—and pegged him as the one who would compromise. Which wasn't right, wasn't fair. He had a say in things too, and just because he might have dinner with someone one night or play ping-pong with them didn't mean he wanted to see them first-thing in the morning when he was waking up without any pants and all he wanted were some eggs. There were different kinds of friends, Lance had realised; some people just weren't no-pants friends. But how did you know who was?

Still thinking about it as he walked out of his exam, where he hoped he'd managed at least an A-, Lance found himself scrolling through his phone and considering the various people he knew. The problem came down to trust, he thought, and who you could be around without always worrying about what their reactions would be. You had to know, or at least guess, how someone would react in any given situation. And then, as long as they were basically a good person, you could relax around them. So who did he know that fit that description? Someone who would reliably respond in the same way, no matter what. Someone who could be counted on to be unswayed by whatever, and if not outright willing to compromise than at least decent enough to not expect Lance to always give in first.

Someone like that stick-in-the-mud Keith Kogane from his first-year floor, whose face didn't seem to understand the meaning of “smile.”

Yeah, Keith could be trusted to be disinterested about pretty much anything, Lance thought; actually, he'd even been around Keith without pants before, some midnight fire drill last year in the winter. Lance had been freezing in his pajama shorts and snow-boots and Keith had looked over at him, as unhappy as ever, and then Lance had lost track of him for a second. When he'd felt a touch on his shoulder he spun around and there had been Keith and Keith's scowl, draping his jacket over Lance's shivering body. And Keith had stood there next to Lance, in his sweatshirt and scarf, fingers in his ears against the blaring alarm, scowling, until they were cleared to go back inside. Lance had followed Keith into the building's lobby and opened his mouth to thank him when Keith just stuck out his hand. Probably not a night-person, then, Lance had reasoned, and settled for giving Keith a smile along with his jacket. They'd never actually spoken about it in daylight hours, but yeah, Lance knew: Keith was basically a good person. Kind of a jerk sometimes, but Lance wasn't above admitting that was true of himself as well, so they'd probably be fine.

Not that he actually had Keith's number, but someone must, right? Lance made that his mission for the weekend: track down Keith Kogane, convince him to live with you, and then find an apartment. Oh, and study for your geography exam, do laundry, maybe go on a date with the girl from down the hall, go to the gym, call home, and mail your little brother a birthday card. All of that in only two days. Stomach growling as he walked down the hill to his dorm, Lance sighed. It was going to be a long weekend. All he really wanted to do was sleep for maybe twelve hours and then watch a movie. But no: financial independence, making his parents proud, making a future for himself. He had to keep going. There wasn't any other option.

 

 

**[May—spring semester, one year ago]**

It was the start of finals week, pouring rain and still cool enough to trick you into thinking that spring hadn't yet arrived, let alone that summer was approaching. Hunk stood dripping for a moment in the vestibule of the physics building, shaking rain from his umbrella and sweatshirt. He didn't have any exams until the day after tomorrow and should probably have been studying, but he'd been staring at engineering textbooks for the past 48 hours straight and he just needed to look at something else. Anything else. So when his roommate texted him and told him to “come see something awesome,” it was an easy choice.

The hallways were quiet, everyone shut up in their own labs or the reading rooms. Hunk's sneakers squeaked as he made his way down to the basement. He'd only been here twice before, both times to bring food to a frantically working Pidge; there was something to be said for the Holt family being geniuses, sure, but they definitely fell short when it came to looking after themselves. Pidge was no exception. If they didn't live together, Hunk was nearly positive that Pidge would've actually passed out somewhere from hunger before, and that was just ridiculous. So the Holt family money paid for groceries, and Hunk was in charge of cooking and also steering Pidge to the dinner table even when they were up to their elbows in research. Not a bad trade-off.

Even though they were only a sophomore, and a computer engineering major besides, Pidge had gotten a position as a research assistant to an upper-year grad student in the physics department, and spent basically every waking hour on the lab computer doing something with galaxy modeling that Hunk only barely understood. He could build the telescope, probably, but asking him to look through it and identify what was on the other end was an exercise in imagination, more of a Rorschach test than actual science.

Hunk pushed open what he thought was the correct door and spied the back of Pidge's head, unruly hair barely visible above a stack of papers. “Hey,” he called out, stepping into the room. “So where's this awesome thing?”

“Right here,” said Pidge, and waved a hand up without turning around. “Come see.”

Hunk drew closer and found Pidge sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by notebooks, miscellaneous lab equipment, and a cage. That last one was new. So were the mice clambering over Pidge's sleeves.

“Please tell me you didn't steal those,” Hunk said, a hand to his forehead. He did not need a repeat of the dog incident, even if the mice were smaller, and probably quieter.

“I didn't,” Pidge said, and smiled.

“Oh, thank god.”

“My boss stole them. Look, aren't they great?” One of the mice, pale pink, had climbed up on top of Pidge's head and was sprawled out as if taking a nap.

“Yes, sure, they're great, now can we put them back? Please?” Hunk reached out for one, a smaller green one, but drew his hand back when the mouse hissed at him. Since when did mice hiss?

“No, Hunk!” Pidge looked up angrily. “We can't put them back. They've been rescued.” Pidge stroked the pink mouse with their finger, smiling as it nuzzled back.

“Okay,” said Hunk, slowly. “Are they radioactive?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Are they poisonous?”

“Again, not that I know of.”

“Are they going to transform into giant mutant mice and shoot lasers from their eyes?”

“Hunk. They're just mice. Yes, they're . . . pastel, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them. Does it?” This last bit was addressed to the four mice, and then Hunk had to wonder if they understood human speech. Probably not, but that was another thing to worry about now. Wonderful.

“Where exactly did they come from?” he asked, edging a bit farther away.

“Allura found them in one of the biological engineering research labs last week. She asked me to watch them today and I taught them a trick. Look!” Pidge whistled and the mice shook themselves off, lined up on the lineoleum floor. At a second whistle, they climbed atop one another to form a tower with the smallest—the blue one—on top. Pidge spread a line of seeds on the floor and held up a finger. The mice wavered but held their tower until Pidge pointed at the seed, and then they toppled down and scrambled forward to eat.

“That is pretty awesome,” Hunk had to admit. “How long did it take you to teach them that?”

“Maybe an hour,” Pidge said. “They're really smart. And they're a lot happier here than stuck in that cage in the lab annex.”

Hunk sighed and sat down on the floor. The biggest of the mice waddled over and plopped down on his knee. He resisted the urge to pet it. Mice were not supposed to be that shade of yellow. And stolen mice were not to be petted. He couldn't get attached to it. “Pidge,” he said, “is Allura going to get in trouble for this?”

Pidge was quiet. The green mouse nibbled at their finger.

“Pidge?”

“I hope not, but I don't know for sure. She did, technically, steal them. But look at them, Hunk! They don't belong in a cage. How could you experiment on something so intelligent?”

“Cute, too,” Hunk admitted. He shifted his legs and the yellow mouse stirred but didn't move.

“Very cute,” Pidge agreed. “You won't tell anyone, right?”

“One of these days, I will teach you about the importance of plausible deniability.” Hunk leaned back against the legs of a lab table. “No, I won't tell anyone.”

Pidge smiled. “I knew you wouldn't,” they said. “So that means we can bring them home, right?”

“What? No. Pidge, no. No mice in the apartment.”

“But they're not regular mice.”

“One: you just told me they were. Two: no mice in the apartment, no matter what kind.”

“I'll keep them on my side.”

“Pidge.” Hunk moved closer. “Look at me. Read my lips. Not happening.”

Pidge crossed their arms and pouted. The three mice not resting on Hunk mimicked their action.

“Nope, nope, that is not going to work on me. I stand firm. Our landlord would evict us, Pidge. And I know your family would help us find another place but we're not going to do that. The mice stay here. Or wherever Allura is keeping them.”

The stand-off lasted a few minutes, Hunk and one sleeping mouse—which didn't really count—against Pidge and the other three. Then Pidge folded with a groan. “Fine,” they said, “you win.”

“I'll make you dinner,” Hunk said, by way of apology. He does feel bad.

“You'd make me dinner anyway,” Pidge pointed out. Which was true. “Make something special for the mice and we'll call it even.”

So this was what Hunk's life had come to. He was twenty-two years old, one year shy of getting his B.S. in mechanical engineering, and reduced to cooking for possibly radioactive lab mice. Incredible. His parents would be so proud.

*

The Garetts only had one son. Dropped in the middle of nowhere, north of Honolulu—nothing but greenery and distant volcanic mountains—they were a long way from American Samoa when they finally settled down, bought an old warehouse just outside of the army base, and spent all their savings turning it into a restaurant. And then Hunk was born, though of course he wasn't called that yet. No one names their baby Hunk. The army had sponsored their move but that didn't mean they really belonged right away; they were still U.S. Nationals, immigrants waiting and working until they accumulated enough residency time to apply for citizenship. While his mom took a job in communications at the base, his dad spent every moment in the warehouse kitchen, and Hunk equally pestered both depending on the day. So he grew up with a smattering of computer programming, map reading, diplomatic phone answering skills, quick knife work, and a taste for spices. Not a bad childhood, all things considered, if a little lonely. Hunk may have looked similar to most of the other kids in his class but they weren't really alike, didn't speak the same way, didn't want the same things. He was older than them, for one thing, held back a year after the move. And then everyone looked at him like he was crazy for leaving the island to go to college, even crazier for going north. Which, yes, he had to admit they had a point there. He was really very tired of being cold.

The first year had been rough, constant adjustments every step of the way. He hadn't been able to get along with his roommate, the classes were overwhelming, the food was terrible, and it snowed from October through April. But his parents had sacrificed a lot just to get him to America proper, let alone to college. No one in his family had ever gone further than high school. So Hunk squared his shoulders and pushed on. He was going to make his parents proud. Even if it meant some short-term misery in the process.

And then he'd met Pidge over the summer, when he was working a part-time job in a hardware store downtown. Pidge had come rushing in the door, all in disarray, a screwdriver in one hand, asking frantically about hose clamps and pipe wrenches. Hunk managed to figure out that they'd just moved into a new apartment—as a first-year, seriously, who did that—and their sink was overflowing. The landlord was, apparently, unreachable, and Pidge had an entire room full of electronics that absolutely could not get wet. It was clear to Hunk that they were panicked, even if it wasn't clear who exactly they were, and fixing flooding plumbing was more interesting than manning a cash register for another two hours. So Hunk left his shift early, turned things over to the bored girl with blue hair who worked with him sometimes but mostly just hung out in the back room reading magazines, and he loaded up his arms with teflon tape and spill pads. “Lead the way,” he had told Pidge, who looked at him in disbelief and then almost burst into tears but instead settled for a hug.

After they'd fixed the plumbing and mopped up the worst of the overflow, and were just sitting around on the damp floor, they finally got to talking. It turned out that Pidge was looking for a roommate. They had only just turned 17 and their parents were worried about them living alone. “Won't your parents mind that you'd be living with a guy?” Hunk had asked, which had earned him a puzzled look from Pidge.

“Why would they?” Pidge had asked.

“Because you're— You're a girl . . .” Hunk had said, though he wasn't so sure anymore and probably shouldn't have said anything in the first place.

“Well,” Pidge had said, drawing the word out. “Kind of? Sort of? Not really?” They ran their hands through their hair, smudged at a streak of grease on their face. “I don't really care about gender all that much. And my parents are fine with it.”

“Oh,” Hunk had said. “Okay.” He couldn't really imagine a world where “parents” and “fine with it” would go together for anything, but maybe some people's parents were different. Pidge smiled at him.

“So, you want to move in?” they had asked. And that's how Pidge Holt and Hunk Garett became roommates, sharing a frankly enormous apartment with a big eat-in kitchen, a living room that doubled as a study, two decently sized bedrooms, and a bathroom with an actual clawfooted tub. Hunk had only ever seen those in movies. There were electronics and electrical equipment everywhere, and at least five computers that Hunk could see, but it was a comforting kind of mess. He didn't tell his parents who he was living with right away, just that he'd found a nice roommate and a good deal on rent, and was happy to be out of the dormitory and in a space where he could control his own thermostat. Plus, the windows on the apartment were amazing. It actually felt like you could see the sunlight, when the sun deigned to rise over the city, as opposed to the perpetual dark of the dorms. And Pidge had phoned home to say they had met someone equally good with repairs as with cooking, so their family didn't have to worry so much. There had been a few very awkward minutes where Pidge passed the phone to Hunk and he spoke to one of the Drs. Holt and made some kind of stilted promise to look after his child, and Dr. Holt had laughed and said he'd send along money for groceries now and then, and wished Hunk good luck with his classes.

All things considered, it was one of the oddest experiences in Hunk's life, but definitely not the worst. And then it turned out that he and Pidge actually got along great, with a few ground rules—no touching Pidge's electronics, no messing with Hunk's pantry organisation—and then sophomore year happened and Hunk met Lance. When he called his parents and told them he'd made two friends he was pretty sure his mom cried. So it took him a while, but Hunk finally figured out what he was doing in college, and even if he still didn't know what he was going to after college things were mostly all right.

 

 

**[August—fall semester, this year]**

The first week of classes has come to an end and Shiro is exhausted. It wasn't even a full week; they started on a Wednesday. It makes no sense that he should be this tired, but here he is, lying on his floor again. He's showered and put on a battered pair of sweatpants he's had since his undergrad days at Queen's. He knows he needs to get up and make dinner at some point—it's already dark out, which means it must be well past seven, going on eight, and he has no idea where the last two hours went—but it seems like too much effort at this point. And he's well aware how pathetic that is, that at twenty-eight he can't even look after himself properly, but it didn't used to be that way. He used to be the most put-together of his friends, the “dad friend,” even. He was an officer in the armed forces, he had responsibilities, he had men looking to follow him and so he always had to know the next move. These days he can barely remember which day to take the recycling out to the curb. Definitely pathetic.

If anyone had told him five years ago that getting a doctoral degree would be harder on him than being in the army he would've laughed. And that's not even it; it's not harder, exactly, just difficult in a different way. Maybe in the opposite way. There's no structure, no one he answers to. Sure, he has advisors, and technically a course leader who oversees his teaching though the man never even answers his emails let alone sits in on classes. But for all practical purposes he's on his own. He's never been on his own before, Shiro is realising. Not like this. Objectively speaking it's not like things are difficult. He gets paid—minimally—to do things that on most days he finds enjoyable. Teaching, reading, researching. He has a place to live, and food in his cupboards, even if he can't be bothered to cook it. He doesn't have the camaraderie of the army, but he has Keith, and a few others in his cohort that he talks to once in a while. So it's not as if anything is especially challenging. He's been shot at; he's been blown up by an IED. He's watched people die, people he'd sat next to and talked to and lived beside only hours before. Why is it that sitting in a library and writing the next chapter of his dissertation is such a struggle?

The only answer can be that there's something wrong with him. Shiro groans as he pushes himself up from the floor and takes a moment to peel off the compression sleeve on his right arm, wincing at the release of pressure. He's not First Lieutenant Shirogane anymore. He can't just sit around and wait for orders, doesn't have the surety of being told what to do and then taking swift action. It's not that he never fucked up in the army, but at least there the consequences were certain, and you dealt with them, and then it was done. Here . . . he has no idea.

Shiro sticks his head under the faucet and breathes out, hard. It's a Friday night. He has two days to get himself together before the new week starts. “You can do this,” he tells himself, and rubs the water from his hair, scrapes it back from his forehead. The white streak at the front has gotten more pronounced recently, Shiro thinks. He's not old enough to be going grey, and yet here he is. He didn't used to wear reading glasses either, so that's another thing he has to thank grad school for.

Cynicism, too. Shiro used to be an optimist. He shuts off the tap and drapes a towel around his neck, wincing at the tightness across his shoulders that comes with the movement. He knows that he carries his right shoulder higher than his left, his body still failing even almost six years later to compensate for the unbalanced weight. The scar tissue around his elbow is shiny and tight; he closes his eyes and sees shrapnel, smoke. Smells the strong and peculiar smell of burning sand, electric and sharp and still as clear today as it ever was. His health insurance would probably cover physical therapy but he doesn't have time, and isn't particularly eager to share his whole medical history with yet another stranger. He stretches his left arm across his chest, does a few slow circles. What remains of his right arm is too sensitive even to touch right now so he leaves it alone. Keith would spar with him if Shiro texted, he knows, but it's also late on a Friday night and Keith is a senior and probably has better things to do than pull his punches against his research advisor even if they are friends.

Besides, Keith would just tell him to go to yoga.

The vouchers are still on the table next to the door, in a bowl with Shiro's keys and bus pass. There's a class tomorrow morning. He could go. If for nothing else, than at least to appease Keith. That's what Shiro tells himself as he half-heartedly eats a bowl of cereal for dinner and strains his eyes on journal articles for a few hours before collapsing onto his bed, careful to sleep on his left side. He'll do it, just the once, and then no one can say he didn't try. And when it doesn't work—because nothing works—he'll be on familiar ground again. And he'll just keep going, like he always does and always has done.

*

It's raining the next morning when Shiro jogs out of his apartment and to the bus stop that will take him into town. He spent far too long searching the internet for what people actually wear to yoga classes, which only led into a spiral of all the different kinds of yoga classes and what they entailed, and was largely unhelpful because everything was geared towards women. Shiro was definitely not showing up in leggings and a tight-fitting tank top. His running shoes are damp by the time he gets on the bus but that shouldn't matter since he's reasonably certain that you do yoga barefooted. He's got a pair of jogging pants and an old army t-shirt that's slightly too small from years of shrinking in the wash, and that will have to be good enough. He's not trying to make an impression on anyone, let alone a good one. If he can go and be in the back of the class, go unnoticed, that would be ideal.

It's only a few minutes' ride to the downtown area where Shiro ducks off the bus and back into the rain, his sweatshirt tugged uselessly over his head. Five years he's lived here and still somehow forgets that in the summer it rains nearly every day. Thunder cracks across the sky and he tucks in against the awnings and overhangs, seeking shelter. The yoga studio is on the second floor of a used furniture store; Shiro's been there before but not since he first moved here. The chairs in his kitchen are from this place. He climbs the rusted metal stairs on the side of the building and steps into the studio, lowering his sweatshirt. It's surprisingly spacious inside, all pale wood floors against the brick walls and industrial windows. In the entryway are some benches with shoes beneath them, and Shiro toes off his sneakers there and lays his wet socks over them in the vain hope that they'll dry during class. He peels off his sweatshirt and leaves it on a peg on the wall, runs a hand through his hair, gives his right arm a self-conscious check, and steps up into the main space.

An older woman with grey hair twisted into a knot on her head comes over to him. She's barefoot and wearing a drapey sweater. “Hello, I don't think I've seen your face before. Are you joining us for the first time today?”

Shiro falters and takes a step back, hovering at the edge of the entryway. “I— Um, my friend gave me this,” he says, and produces the now-wet voucher from his pocket. “So I thought I would just check it out once.” Put him in front of a room full of eighteen-year-olds and he doesn't stammer, but one old lady who's at least a head shorter than him and he apparently can't find words. This is just for an hour, Shiro reminds himself; just get through the next hour and then you can go home and spend the rest of the day sleeping. He straightens his back and mostly hides a wince at the movement.

“Oh, wonderful,” the lady says, and takes the crumpled paper. “Today's class will mainly be the basics of Ashtanga yoga, and parts of the primary series. I'm Arus.”

“Shiro,” he says, and puts on his best neutral expression, as if he has any idea what Arus just said.

“Welcome, Shiro. You can get a mat and a block from the rack over there, and find a space on the floor. If you're new to all this, I suggest being near the front.”

“Sure,” Shiro says, and doesn't mean it at all. He's still a little damp when he spreads his mat on the floor, compromising by being somewhere near the middle row, off to the side of the others who all seem to know what they're doing. He is, by far, the biggest guy in the room—but at least there are a few other men, which he hadn't been counting on. Still, he feels out of place. His body isn't built for this, whatever “this” is. Until Keith had started talking to him about it, Shiro thought of yoga as some kind of advanced stretching, when he thought about it all. His body is built for fighting, for carrying forty kilos of gear across the desert. He looks ridiculous here amongst everyone else who is lithe and svelte and all those words that haven't applied to Shiro since he hit puberty.

Shiro very firmly looks dead ahead as the class starts with some slow stretching and Arus saying something he can't really make out. His heartbeat is loud in his own ears and his toes feel cold on the mat. His prosthetic is slow to respond when they all twist their arms out in front of them. He's wishing that he wore a looser shirt when they fold forward and he can feel the fabric riding up, a draft of air across his lower back. It's stupid to be embarrassed and yet here he is, rising to his feet and not even meeting his own eyes in the mirrored wall at the front of the room. Arus leads them into the first movement, something called a Vinyasa, and Shiro's shoulders ache as he pushes up and back. His toes slip as he shifts and one knee drops down on the mat for balance. His hair is in his eyes and he'd be annoyed but at least he doesn't have to look at anyone else as he follows Arus's voice telling them all to jump or step to the front of their mats and then slowly stand up. There are breathing patterns, too, and he hears them being given but he can't follow. Arus's voice is warm, nothing like his drill sergeant's, but right now he'd be grateful to drop and do twenty push-ups rather than another cycle of whatever this is.

“Relax,” he hears quietly from his right.

Shiro turns. The rest of the class is still in position and the young woman next to him is too, but she's also turned her head just slightly in his direction. “Sorry?” he says.

“Relax,” she repeats. “You're doing just fine.”

Shiro huffs a breath and lifts his left arm to swipe the hair out of his eyes, momentarily putting all his weight on his prosthetic. The woman watches and her smile doesn't falter.

“First time?” she asks.

“Obviously,” he says, breathing a little easier as they come to the front of their mats again and slowly rise with an inhale. Shiro tries to keep his eyes forward but sometimes the Canadian in him comes out more than others, and this is apparently one of those times. It's rude not to look at someone who's speaking to you. So he glances over again as they transition into what Arus calls sun salutations.

“Expand the chest,” Arus tells them, and Shiro feels a sharpness in his ribs as he inhales. These are not movements he's accustomed to.

“It gets easier,” the woman next to him says. She bends easily to the mat and into a fluid transition, long limbs in dark leggings and a pastel tank top looking far more graceful than anything Shiro could manage even with practice. When they both straighten up, she is nearly as tall as him.

“Oh yeah?” Shiro asks, as they lunge their right legs forward. That much, at least, he can do. “How long have you been doing this?”

“Almost nine years now,” she says. Arus is counting breaths for them and Shiro puts his head down and tries to follow. They rise into some kind of bended knee position, arms overhead. He looks over again when their heads are down. Her hair is soft white, a long ponytail bright against dark skin. “This is a difficult class to start with.” She speaks with an accent, though not one that Shiro can easily place. Even in a whisper it's present, soft around the vowels and crisp on the consonants.

“I'm sure you're just saying that, but thank you.” Shiro tries to follow as Arus leads them into some kind of twisting lunge, one arm in the air. He's very conscious of the fact that even though they're speaking softly, no one else in the class is really talking, and presumably they're supposed to be saving their breath for whatever the point of all these counted breaths are.

“I'm not, I promise,” she says, with a small laugh. “Do what you can, do not push yourself. We'll talk more after class, all right? We should probably focus now.”

Shiro flicks his gaze over to her again and finds himself nodding despite himself. So much for his plan to slip out immediately afterwards. But the smile she gives him in return is almost worth it. He moves stiffly into the next position, bending over one knee in a way that makes his lower back pull tight.

The rest of the class is more or less a blur, Shiro pushing his body to keep up with Arus's pace, annoyed that a senior citizen is out-performing him. How does Keith do this? Although, Shiro thinks as they come back down to their mats for a new position, Keith has always been more limber than him. Smaller, too, which probably helps. And Keith's roommate is probably even more limber; that guy can't seem to sit still. Shiro fakes his way through what he can and can't keep from tensing when Arus comes over to correct his alignment, which defeats the point of her gestures. She clicks her tongue at him and he bites his lip, feeling like he's been chastened by his grandmother. The young woman next to him, mercifully, doesn't laugh the way he expects her to. When the class finishes with a few minutes of silence as they're all folded forward, faces to the mats, Shiro tries to steel his nerves. He's going to get even at Keith, somehow, for making him do this. Thoughts of revenge are surprisingly calming, and when Arus tells them all to rise and put away their gear he's a bit more relaxed.

That is, until he turns and finds himself standing very close to the young woman from earlier. “Sorry,” he says quickly, and backs away.

“It's fine,” she says, and then gives him another smile. “You made it through.”

Shiro feels himself frowning a little before he can help it and tries to cover by lifting his mat and blocks, making to put them away. She reaches out and touches his arm.

“No, honestly. I've seen a lot of people give up part of the way through. It's a tougher discipline than you would think.”

“This was sort of a one-time thing,” Shiro says. “A friend put me up to it. He wouldn't have let me hear the end of it if I backed out.”

She laughs. “You're the first person I've ever met who has been blackmailed into yoga. I'm Allura, by the way. What's your name?”

“Shiro,” he says, and puts out his hand. People typically shake with the right hand, and for him that's his prosthetic, so handshakes have proven to be a good indicator of whether or not whoever he's meeting is genuine. Allura grips his hand firmly—the sensors in his arm are better than they used to be, ever since one of Keith's engineering friends had gotten hold of him—and the soft expression on her face doesn't change.

“Very nice to meet you, Shiro.” She shoulders her mat with ease and Shiro's eyes track along her toned arms before he realises it and brings his gaze firmly back to his face. “Are you busy now?”

“Not especially,” Shiro says, and then kicks himself, because he is busy, has an essay assignment to write up for his students and some work to do on the course's website, plus the ever-present dissertation work. But apparently he's easily distracted today.

“Wonderful. Why don't you come have lunch with me?” Allura leads the way to the entryway and slips on a pair of sneakers, pulls a sweatshirt and a raincoat down from one of the pegs. She has some kind of strap for her yoga mat that she tightens and slings over one arm, looking on while Shiro scrunches his still-wet socks and debates the merits of putting them back on. He throws his sweatshirt over one shoulder and stuffs the socks in his pockets, lacing up his sneakers over bare feet instead. Definitely under-dressed for lunch. How did Allura manage to get through an entire hour's class and still look so pulled together? He's can feel the heat on his face, knows how much the scar across the bridge of his nose stands out when his cheeks get flushed. His sweatshirt has a hole in the collar that he's only just noticed.

“I don't want to interfere with your plans,” he says, shifting his footing awkwardly. He tries to put his hands in his pockets but of course all that gets him is a handful of wet socks, so that's not an improvement.

“Nonsense,” Allura says. “I want you to. Come on, I know a great place a few blocks from here.” She reaches out and takes him by the hand, and Shiro stumbles over his feet before his brain catches up and he follows her down the stairs and onto the sidewalk. The rain has stopped but the sky is still hazy and low. Allura raises her free hand to smooth her hair back and flicks her ponytail over her shoulder. It's grown fluffier in the humidity. Shiro takes an extra step to catch up, matching strides until he's beside her. He doesn't know when he last held anyone's hand. He doesn't know what to say. Mercifully, Allura doesn't seem to have those worries.

“So, Shiro,” she asks him, swinging their hands a bit. “What do you do?”

“I'm a Ph.D. candidate in history,” he says, though it takes him a second. Her fingers are strong against his—his left hand, this time, so he can really feel it. “Sixth year. I work on secret military societies in the second World War. And what about you?”

“Ph.D. candidate in physics, fifth year. Do you know what Seyfert galaxies are?”

“No,” Shiro has to admit.

“Well, don't worry, most people don't. But I do—I work on those, and their connection to black holes and galaxy evolution.” Allura comes to a stop at a crosswalk, waiting for the light to change.

“Galaxy evolution?” Shiro asks. He is in way over his head, he knows, in more ways than one. Physics was never his strong suit, especially not astrophysics.

“Yes. Essentially . . . How to explain it. This is good practice for my job pitch, actually.”

They cross the street and continue on. Now that it's a little later in the day there are more people out and about. Shiro hopes he doesn't run into any of his students; he might not recognise them yet but they'd certainly recognise him and he doesn't want to have to explain in class on Monday what he was doing strolling down the street holding hands with someone and wearing a t-shirt that's too small. That isn't the kind of persona he tries to project. Professor Shirogane is confident, steady yet approachable. Shiro is mostly just adrift, and stressed. And, apparently, easily drawn into holding hands with a brilliant, beautiful stranger who could probably bench-press him before breakfast. So that's new.

“Essentially,” Allura tells him, “I'm studying radio waves, and how they interact with these spiral galaxies called Seyfert galaxies, which are powered by accretion onto supermassive black holes at their center. I'm looking for patterns that might explain how exactly their relationship works.” She pulls Shiro around a corner and they come to a stop outside some restaurant he's never been to before called Smythe's, a few blocks off the main street. “Then we can use that data to make better predictions about galaxy evolution,” she says, and opens the door.

Shiro follows her inside and looks around as she releases his hand. The place is small and narrow, two-person tables lined up in rows with a high counter at the back, and a kitchen beyond. “That sounds complex,” he says as they wait for a table, “and definitely out of my depth, but I'm intrigued. Nothing that I work on is actually going to do any good for the future. It's all just academic curiosity. More or less useless at the end of the day.”

“Not at all,” Allura tells him. “You're just working for the future in a different way.”

“What, by examining the past, we learn from our mistakes? That kind of thing?”

“Exactly.”

Shiro smiles, but it's a little bitter. “No one in my department actually believes that. But it's a nice thought.”

They get seated down at a table near the back, among a few other customers. “It isn't just sentiment, Shiro,” Allura says. “The work you do does matter.”

There's a tightness in Shiro's throat then that he can't explain and doesn't really want to dwell on. He breaks eye contact with Allura—hers are a very bright blue, difficult to look away from even deliberately—and looks around the restaurant again instead. There aren't any menus on the table. His stomach grumbles and he's positive Allura hears.

“Hungry?” she asks, and yes, she definitely heard.

“I forgot to have breakfast,” Shiro admits, and rubs the back of his neck sheepishly, carefully stretches his shoulders out in the narrow space around their table. The area where his prosthetic joins his arm throbs with pain from the strains of the past hour.

“Shiro! That's not good, you need to eat. Lunch is my treat, all right?” And before Shiro can protest, Allura is flagging down one of the kitchen staff who looks about the age of Shiro's students. He brings over two glasses of water and some silverware. “May we have some hot tea, two of the usual, and tell Coran we'll have whatever else he's got today as well, please. Thank you, Malcolm.”

The kid nods and retreats back behind the counter.

“You must come here a lot,” Shiro ventures.

“Oh, yes. My lab advisor owns this place, and he's something of a family friend, so I'm often here.” Allura takes a long drink of water, which gives Shiro time to collect his thoughts, but mainly he can't seem to stop looking at her. She either doesn't notice, or is too gracious to call him out. “You'll probably meet him, in fact, he usually comes out to say hello when I'm here.”

Shiro clears his throat. “I'm a little envious,” he says. “My dissertation chair is intimidating as hell, and definitely not someone whose cooking I'd trust. It must be nice.”

“It is, though it's not as if things always go smoothly.”

“When do they ever?”

Malcolm comes back from the kitchen with their tea, and a plate of something Shiro can't identify. With the smell of food his hunger dissipates as suddenly as it arrived, as it always does these days. Allura digs in with her fork right away. “Eat, Shiro,” she tells him between bites, and he takes a forkful with some hesitation. “You need to eat well, and rest well, if you want to get anything done.”

“You don't have to worry about me, Allura,” he says, and to appease her he takes a bite. Whatever it is, it's warm and spicy, strangely green in colour but surprisingly not terrible. “What is this?” he asks.

“Hmm, do you know, I'm not entirely sure?” Allura takes another bite and smiles. Her half of the plate is nearly gone. “But it's good, isn't it?”

Shiro nods, though he wouldn't really call it “good,” per se. Interesting, definitely. “Your lab advisor,” he says, watching as Allura's fork crosses over to his side of the plate, “is he the one in charge of the menu?”

“Yes, which is why it's always different.”

“But you ordered 'the usual,' ” Shiro points out.

“Coran knows what I like,” she says, which isn't really an answer. Shiro shakes his head a little and turns the plate around, spins it so that the fuller portion is in front of her and watches colour rise to Allura's cheeks. “Sorry,” she says, “I'm starving. Aren't you? You didn't eat breakfast.”

“It's fine. I'll wait for 'the usual.' ” Somewhere along the line, maybe a year ago or maybe two, Shiro's appetite kind of left him. He'd always been hungry, before; two helpings of dinner every night as a kid, never satisfied with the army rations. But lately even if his body protests, eating is just another chore, something he does to keep himself going, in the same category as paying his bills and mechanically closing his eyes for at least a few hours every night.

Their food comes and they talk as they eat, or rather, Allura talks and Shiro finds himself answering far more questions than he expected when he let himself be dragged along to lunch. Afterwards—nearly two hours later—Allura insists on paying, and puts her arm through Shiro's as they walk back towards the main street. She's forward, and normally Shiro would mind, would be suspicious or uncomfortable, but in this case he just isn't. It's strange and it's unlike him; there's no obvious reason that he can see for Allura to want to spend time with him. They've only just met. But when he grows quiet, she starts to frown, and he realises that, all other worries aside, he doesn't want that. So it's simple, really. He has to keep talking.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In unsurprising news, the amount of time I spend thinking about this fic far exceeds the amount of time I have to write it. Such is the gradschool life.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who read and commented on the first chapter, whether here or on tumblr (@stick-around-town). Your words & support mean a lot to me! I hope you continue to enjoy the story. Feel free to talk headcanons with me, or ask questions about anything I'm writing!
> 
> Disclaimers, which probably should've appeared in chapter one: though I have done both martial arts (karate) and yoga (Ashtanga Vinyasa) I am by no means an expert, and if you are you may spot things that don't seem right. Sorry; if there are glaring errors you can send me a message about them. Also, part of the yoga thing, at least, is Shiro being utterly confused and also the epitome of "Trying Too Hard."


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

 

**[April—spring semester, one year ago]**

Sometimes you had days when you left your apartment at eight in the morning and didn't return until well into the following day, when your eyes hurt and nothing made sense anymore. You dropped your keys trying to open the front door, and then tripped up the steps on your way in, because your body had been awake for thirty-something hours and hated you. Pidge was having one of those days.

They stumbled upstairs and knocked their head gently against the apartment door. “Hunk,” Pidge called softly. “Hunk, let me in.” Of course there was no answer—on a Wednesday afternoon, where else would Hunk be but at work? Pidge was the only one whose schedule was stupid and unpredictable. Turning the key in the lock required far too much concentration, and closing the door behind them even more. When Pidge could finally slump down on the couch it was all they could do to drop their backpack and get their shoes most of the way off. Things that were required, in order, were: sleep, food, shower, sleep again. Unfortunately, there was a computer science exam in two days, a lab report due for physics before midnight, and they were out of shampoo.

Sophomore year wasn't supposed to be this exhausting. Or at least, that's what Pidge had always been told. Hunk certainly hadn't seemed this stressed out last year. So what made things different? Face pressed into the couch cushions, glasses askew, Pidge thought about this for a moment. A moment was about all the coherent thought they had left. Circuit board re-builds and SETI equations had taken up all available brain power for at least the next six hours.

The answer was, probably, that Hunk was better at being a person. He understood basic things like doing dishes and ironing shirts and picking up the mail. Pidge knew, on a logical level, that those were all important tasks in this whole process of “becoming an adult” that college was supposed to teach but in reality, they just seemed so unimportant. And so they got left behind, in favour of testing out a new soldering iron or figuring out how to make the doorbell play the _X-Files_ theme song. Both of which were obviously more critical pursuits.

These and so many other reasons were why the Holts had been adamant that Pidge not live alone. They knew their child well enough to anticipate the absolute disaster that would be. So when Dr. Holt—father, seismologist, polymath—deposited money into Hunk's account for groceries, or Dr. Holt—mother, neurologist, ambidexterous—required a proof-of-life text from Pidge at least twice a week, it was their way of looking after their wayward offspring as best they could from the windy expanse of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Pidge wondered sometimes who was looking after their older brother, Matt, currently roaming the Alaskan wilderness on a geology expedition. Or maybe Matt was better at looking after himself.

Groaning, Pidge, kicked their sneakers the rest of the way off and drew their feet up onto the couch, curled in tight, closed their eyes. In less than a week it would be their birthday. Nineteen years, almost, and this was all they had to show for it. Exhaustion and failed projects, rejected grant applications. Growing up in a family of geniuses was hard enough; doing it as the least of them was hard in a way Pidge didn't even have words for. Sure, they were smart, they were “gifted,” they had entered college early. But Matt entered earlier. Matt got higher grades, better funding. Matt had a job. And maybe it would've been easier to find some drive out of resentment but then Matt had to go and be kind and funny and generally the best older brother one could ask for so Pidge couldn't even hold anything against him. And it wasn't as if their parents were uncaring. On the contrary, Pidge's mom and dad, if a bit absent in physical affection, were supportive, reassuring. But the very fact that they had anything to reassure Pidge about meant that their youngest child wasn't performing up to standards. And “standard” had never been good enough for the Holts. They were an “exceeds expectations” family. Strive better, go farther. _Semper ad meliora._ Matt was trading Alaska for Antarctica next year. Pidge's dad was going to go with him, lead visiting scientist at Great Britain's Halley Research Station. And Pidge couldn't even manage to improve on a simple equation.

This was the problem with “gifted” kids: sooner or later, they grew up and figured out that they weren't always the smartest one in the room, but by that point they'd spent so long living up to the label that anything short of being on top equaled failure. They grew up and became insecure adults. Because they should know how to do things without ever being taught, so they never learned to ask questions, ask for help. It wasn't anyone's fault, really—Pidge's parents only wanted what was best for their child, the advanced mathematics classes, the after school robotics program, and being on the “gifted” track meant all those things—but the end result was this. It was a rude awakening.

When Hunk came home, some two hours later, Pidge was still moping on the couch. Because Hunk was a saint, he took one look at his roommate, sighed, and hauled Pidge into the bathroom. “Shower,” he said from the doorway. “Don't drown in the tub. I'll make dinner.”

Pidge stood there under the hot spray of the shower with Hunk's shampoo in hand and resolutely did not cry, and when they got out and dried off and went out to the kitchen in sweats there was a mound of pasta waiting. Afterwards, Hunk dropped a blanket on them on the couch and they leaned against each other to watch re-runs of _Home Improvement_ until Pidge fell asleep. Later, much later, when the first light of dawn was coming in through the tall windows, Pidge woke up to the quiet of the room, a pillow tucked under their head where Hunk's arm had been. The ancient ceiling fan spun slowly overhead, casting the barest flicker of shadows moving across the floor. Hunk was snoring in the other room. The responsible thing to do, Pidge knew, would be to get up, write and submit the lab report—even though now it would be late, and marked down—and then spend a couple of hours studying for their exam. But it was so much easier to turn back into the couch, and close their eyes.

* 

They brought this upon themself, really; sophomores weren't usually research assistants to upper-year doctoral students, not least because of the hours of time involved. But Pidge had seen the flyer in the hallway of the physics building one day after a lecture in the fall and they needed something to put on their resume. There was also, maybe, the small motivational factor that Matt wasn't the greatest at physics. All siblings were competitive, weren't they? Pidge tore off one of the e-mail address tabs and pocketed it, and later that week ended up perched on a stool in one of the labs feeling small and underdressed in shorts and a sweatshirt in front of a very tall, very beautiful grad student in a lab coat.

“My name is Allura Alteana,” she said. “I'd be your supervisor, if this position works out. So, Pidge, tell me why you want to do this kind of research.”

Pidge swiveled on the stool; it creaked, metal on metal, loud in the empty lab. “I like puzzles,” they said after a minute. “Things that need to be solved. And it sounds like your project has a lot of those.”

“That it does.”

There was another moment of silence, and then, under scrutiny, fidgeting with their glasses, Pidge had said, “Plus, I want to go to space.”

“Well, I'm afraid I can't make that happen for you.” Allura smiled. “But good to know.”

“I mean, there's just so much of it. There has to be something out there. The fact that we haven't found anything yet isn't evidence of absence—it just means we don't have the right instruments, or the right calibrations. Or maybe our equations are wrong.”

“Are you a Carl Sagan fan, Pidge?”

“The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space,” Pidge quoted in response. “My mom used to have _Contact_ on in the background while she was trying to get my brother and I to fall asleep. That probably explains a lot.”

“Oh, Jodie Foster,” Allura sighed. “I have very mixed feelings about that movie,” she said, and looked off into the distance for a moment. “But yes, so what do your parents do? Where are you from?” 

“My mom's a neurologist at a children's hospital, and my dad's a professor of geology. University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. So that's where I grew up.” Pidge looked up at Allura, who was still smiling. “Um, and you? Am I allowed to ask? Do I call you Professor Alteana?”

“No, please, you can just call me Allura,” she said. “I grew up near Berkeley, California. It made the most sense, for— well, for many reasons, to simply do my undergrad degree at U.C. Berkeley, and then I've been here for four years. Next year should be my last, if all goes well with the project.”

“Speaking of,” said Pidge, “the flyer wasn't really that clear. What exactly would I be doing, as your research assistant? Provided you want me, I mean.”

“You're a computer science major, yes?” she asked. Pidge nodded. “I need someone who would be able to help me run the telescope installation I'm working on, and also to make some models for projections that I could use when I give presentations. The hours are flexible, as long as the work gets done. I wasn't specifically looking for a compsci major to be my assistant, but it does work out nicely.”

“That sounds good,” Pidge agreed.

“Do you have any questions for me, Pidge?” asked Allura.

“Not really, just— Does this mean I've got the job?”

“Barring any objections from my lab supervisor, yes. To be honest,” Allura laughed a little, “you're the only one who's answered the advertisement.”

“Really?”

“I suppose it's not a very popular position. Students these days might not be as interested in becoming rocket scientists as they once were. The space race has been over for a long time.”

“I don't believe that. Look at Space-X—it's not over, it's just become privatised.” Pidge inched forward on their stool. “I want to go to Mars. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. People are interested. I think everyone here is just . . . busy with other things.”

“Yes, well, that is life, after all, Pidge.” Allura smiled, and ran a hand through her hair. It hung loose and pale around her shoulders, bright under the lab's fluorescent lights. “It's what happens when you're busy with other things.”

Later that day, sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor while Hunk cooked dinner in their apartment, Pidge wondered how anyone was supposed to feel like they were making progress if that was true—if time is linear, and limitless, does anyone ever reach a point where they feel that they've accomplished all they set out to do? Or do you just keep going, and things keep happening, and then one day you die?

There is a subset of Einstein's theory of relativity which posits that two observers moving at different relations to a gravitational mass experience time differently. It's called time dilation; theoretically, if you were to go far enough out in space, time would pass slower for you than it would on Earth. For astronauts out on the International Space Station, the difference is noticeable but insignificant, barely fractions of a second per month. Farther out though, on Mars or Jupiter, out into different galaxies, would the gravitational changes be so extreme that you live one day in the span of hours, one year in the span of days? Would that be better? Pidge wondered; Would the worth of your own life be clearer to you if you knew that time was running out?

In some ways, college was an approximation of that. You had your four years, and then you moved on. And if you didn't figure out what you were doing with your life by the end, you started slipping farther and farther behind while everyone else moved ahead. Not knowing what to do with their life wasn't Pidge's problem, though. They wanted to contract time, to move ahead and leave others behind. Go farther, succeed faster, live up to the family name. Rather than time dilation, acceleration. More and more until there was no way anyone could catch up, let alone overtake them. Then, Pidge thought, then they could be happy.

 

 

**[September—fall semester, this year]**

Shiro knows he overdid it when even folding laundry makes his body ache. Stretching out to put two corners of a fitted sheet together, he feels the pull across his shoulder blades, upper back, that tightness that comes from too many hours throwing himself at a punching bag in the gym. They are halfway through the month, four weeks into the semester, and already he's reached the point of fighting shadows at two o'clock in the morning. That doesn't exactly bode well for the remaining eleven weeks.

Warm from wrestling with his laundry, Shiro bends just enough to take his sweatshirt off, wincing as he pulls his right arm in close to his body. Standing there in his t-shirt, he reaches up and unlocks the mechanism that attaches the prosthetic to what's left of his arm. It's strange—it doesn't weigh much, his prosthetic, and yet removing it always makes him feel lighter. The pressure points are red above his elbow. He sets the prosthetic down on his nightstand, rolls up the sleeve of his t-shirt, and means to get back to folding but instead just sits down. Socks to his left, underwear to the right, towels in a heap in front of him. Everything smells fresh, nostalgic; the detergent is the one his mother has always used. It should be comforting but mostly it just makes him sad. He hasn't called home in a while.

It's not that he doesn't want to talk to his parents. It's just that he doesn't really know what to say anymore. His mother always asks him if he's eating enough, and his father asks him if teaching is going well, and he doesn't like to lie but it's also becoming increasingly more difficult to tell the truth. Not that teaching is going badly, per se, but he hasn't quite hit his stride this semester. Every class still feels like the first one, his students still look at him with blank expressions three-quarters of the time. Even the ones who are doing their work and turning in assignments aren't speaking up in class. Maybe because it's been raining for an entire week, or maybe because they have exams in all their other courses, Shiro doesn't know but the point is he's frustrated, and doesn't like feeling frustrated with his students. He likes to think the best of them.

Today is Thursday, which means he doesn't have to teach, doesn't have office hours. Technically, he has the whole day to spend on his own work and research. There are grant deadlines at the end of next month that he needs to meet, and a conference he's been meaning to apply for. Also, he needs to go grocery shopping kind of desperately if he wants to eat something other than rice for the next few days. Running errands was so much easier last year. Last year, he had a car. Over the summer, though, his mother got into an accident—she was fine, for the most part, but her car was a complete loss. So now she's driving Shiro's twelve-year-old station wagon and he's here with public transportation. Toronto had public transit too, obviously, and it's not as if his mother wouldn't have been able to get around, but at the time it made more sense for him to be the one navigating bus systems in the dark instead of her. And it still does. Shiro is a good son, he thinks, at least most of the time. He doesn't want his mother waiting on a street corner for a bus when she's coming home from working the night shift at the university library.

He could walk to the grocery store, take the bus back. That would cut down on time by maybe thirty minutes. Or he could just sit here, lean back until his head rests on back on a pile of folded t-shirts, stare up at the ceiling. Most of the spiders are gone now. The weather's turning cool. He picks up his phone and scrolls idly through his email, sorting things into folders until his inbox only has two memos about upcoming events and nothing important for him to deal with. He gives himself two more minutes of lying there, doing nothing, and then forces himself to sit up, stand up, and put away his laundry.

Curry rice always makes things better, so Shiro makes some—no meat, one small potato from the bottom of the bag, difficult to peel one-handed but not impossible—and sits down to work. If he can just read through two articles and draft an abstract for the conference, he might feel like he actually accomplished something today. In the background, some mix CD that Keith made him plays at low volume, songs in a language he mostly doesn't understand, just the right kind of low-level distraction to block out the part of his mind that would otherwise be circling and analysing all the things he's done wrong this week.

*

Over the weekend, Keith convinces him to come visit. The apartment that Keith shares with his roommate Lance is small but neater than you'd expect from two guys in their senior years of college. Plus, it always has food. Slightly out of breath from the walk uphill, Shiro unzips his jacket and steps over the bushes to tap on their window—the doorbell hasn't worked for almost a year now. Keith pulled it apart after a particularly long week of drunk students ringing it as a prank on their way home from the bars. Through the blinds, Shiro sees Lance's face break out into a grin. “Hey,” he says when the kid lets him in. “How's it going, Lance?”

“Oh, you know,” Lance says. “Keith is kicking my ass in Jet Force Gemini, so what else is new. Come on in, lunch is almost ready.” Lance is wearing an apron with a saying on it in Spanish that, knowing him, is probably rude or funny, or both, but Shiro never learned Spanish.

“Thanks,” he says. He leaves his sneakers by the door, hangs his jacket on one of the hooks over the back of their front door. “Hey Keith,” he calls out, over the other side of the table where Keith is intently focused on shooting down some kind of flying armored dog. Lance glances over a minute later, yells, and vaults over the table.

“Cheater!” he says, shouldering Keith out of the way and grabbing his controller. “You unpaused it! That's a coward's move, Keith.”

“You looked away,” Keith says, and sounds smug as he launches a grenade at Lance's poor dog. “I call that tactics, not cowardice.”

“Quit trying to distract me with Shiro. It won't work. You can't blame him. Shiro is too good for that.”

“Ha,” Keith says, but he doesn't argue. Shiro rubs the back of his neck and walks around the table to drop down onto the couch next to them.

“Don't bring me into your rivalry,” he says, though it's useless to protest at this point. It's always been useless. “And Keith, cheating, even when tactically advisable, is still cheating.”

“Yes, dad,” Keith mutters, and it would be endearing except he looks far too pleased with himself, standing there on a rooftop across from Lance's defeat.

Lance sighs. “I'll get you next time,” he says.

“You should be Vela,” Shiro tells him as he walks into the kitchen. “Lupus is too slow. You'll never beat Keith that way.”

“You up for a match?” Keith asks. “While Lance finishes cooking?”

“Are you asking because you think you can beat me so easily?” Shiro smiles. “Because you'd be wrong, Keith.”

“We'll see.”

Keith picks Juno again so Shiro chooses Vela, the girl of the galaxy-saving trio. They make their way through a warehouse level, jumping crates to climb to the roof, ducking behind buildings to avoid the spray of machine gun fire. Shiro takes up a post behind some sandbags, his character down on her stomach in the dirt, gun sights trained on Keith's character who is busy smashing crates for a power upgrade. The game's controls haven't aged well and aiming is a little shaky, but Shiro holds his breath and takes Keith's teenaged space policeman out in one shot. Keith groans, and Lance cheers from the kitchen.

“I'm older than you, I grew up playing this game,” Shiro reminds Keith, and reaches over to tousle his hair. “But keep trying.” Videogames, he's learned, are strangely good occupational therapy. His prosthetic is responding well; though the finger dexterity isn't as precise as it would be on his natural hand, it's quick enough to squeeze the R-button or move his thumb around the C-buttons.

“Rematches will have to wait until after we eat,” Lance says. “Come on, sit down, eat while the stew's hot.”

They crowd together around the narrow table in the kitchen, Lance tucked in along the window, Keith near the door. Shiro notices, as he always does, that they gave him the most protected spot, as they always do for these Sunday lunches. Clear line of sight, quick access to the exit. One of these days he might figure out how to stop being embarrassed at how well they—Keith especially—know him, but today he's just grateful to sit down to a hot meal and not be looking over his shoulder every few seconds.

Lance carries most of the conversation over lunch. The stew has a flavour Shiro is coming to associate with this, with eating around the table in Lance and Keith's kitchen, chicken with potatoes and olives and raisins, things he would never think to pair together. It's delicious, though, and more importantly it's the first substantial meal Shiro's had in a while. Keith picks out the olives from his portion, piles them high on the side of Lance's bowl. Lance eats them automatically, one after another. It's comfortable, being with the two of them. Probably because they're so comfortable with themselves. Their lack of personal space with each other sometimes makes Shiro wonder if there's something going on there, something beyond friendship, but Keith's never hinted at it and he's certainly not going to ask. Lance would probably tell him, if there was. Lance is not great at keeping secrets, not when he's happy about them. And presumably they would be happy.

“So what does your week look like, Shiro?” Lance asks him. “More endless meetings with your students?”

“Thankfully, no. I have a meeting with one of my advisors on Wednesday, and apart from that it should be a regular week. How about you guys? Any exams coming up?”

“Keith's got a government essay due Tuesday night. I have a meeting with one of my lab supervisors tomorrow, and a caluculus exam on Friday.”

“I'm almost done,” Keith interjects. “So you don't have to worry about it.”

“I worry about your poor professor, having to look at your dumb face in his eight a.m. lecture,” Lance retorts, and sticks out his tongue. Keith kicks him under the table. “Seriously, though,” Lance says, laughing, “you've been having a hard time with this class, I just want you to get a good grade on this one.”

“Who's the professor?” Shiro asks.

“Iverson,” Keith says.

“He hates Keith, apparently,” Lance adds.

“He doesn't. At least, I don't think he does. He's just really old, and lectures for fifty minutes non-stop, and it's so hard to stay awake in that class.” Keith helps himself to another serving of stew. “So I said something early on about how maybe he could write on the board, or make some slides, or something, and he gave this speech about how learning has deteriorated in American classrooms. Basically said we were all too lazy and needed to pay attention more.”

“Hmm.” Shiro shifts in his chair, thinking. He knows from teaching Keith, three years ago, that auditory learning isn't his friend's strong suit. Some kind of visual aid would probably go a long way towards capturing Keith's attention. “Can you take notes while he talks?”

“I try, he just speaks so quickly it's hard to keep up. It doesn't matter, I'm going to do fine in his class. It's a pain, that's all.”

“Yeah, especially because your GPA is so high, Mister _Summa Cum Laude_. Don't want to ruin that now.” Lance says it like he's teasing, but they all know how proud he is of Keith. The refrigerator across the room has the evidence all over it: copies of Keith's grades from previous semesters, a paper with a bright red A+ circled on the front. Lance's work is up there, too. Apparently, in lieu of any parents to hang good reports on the fridge, they've decided to do it for each other. Shiro thinks back to his own fridge, bare except for a single magnet, and tries not to feel jealous.

“Like you can talk,” Keith says. “I've seen your grades. Your GPA is as good as mine.”

“Yeah, well, we're both great, OK?”

“You are,” Shiro agrees. Keith blushes and Lance laughs. “No, I mean it. You both work so hard. I'm proud of you guys.”

“Right,” Lance says. “Next time you come over, you're bringing something to put on the fridge. No arguments.” And then he makes the face that Shiro can't say no to, all earnest and wide-eyed.

“All right, fine,” he says. “Next time.”

 

 

**[August—fall semester, one year ago]**

When Lance and Keith moved into their apartment together, the last few weeks of summer before their junior year, the skies were dark and heavy. A warm wind blew up from the valley, tossed the branches of the hydrangea near the porch, petals swirling away. Lance clambered out of the back of an over-crowded minivan and pushed his hair out his eyes. The air tasted like rain. His two younger step-siblings climbed out after him while his mom came up to put a hand on his shoulder, and his step-dad opened the trunk. “It looks nice, Lance,” his mom said. “You chose a good place.” His step-dad started handing off smaller things to the kids, a box of plants, a duffel bag. Lance saw another box tilting and rushed to grab it before his dishes smashed onto the sidewalk.

“My roommate should be here soon,” Lance told his parents, hoisting the box under one arm so he could grab another. “I guess we can start carrying things in.”

The landlord had left the keys in the mailbox, which wasn't exactly secure but did show that the area was relatively safe. Lance went ahead and unlocked the main door and then the door at the back of the hallway into apartment two, his home for the next year. It smelled like pine-sol inside—crisp, strong. He set the box of dishes down on the narrow table in the kitchen, crossed the floor to open the window and let the breeze in. The ceiling light was just a bare bulb but it lit the room well enough against the storm brewing outside. The place was small, just the main kitchen and living space plus two tiny bedrooms and a cramped bathroom, but Lance had grown up sharing everything so it wasn't anything new. Hopefully Keith wouldn't mind either. When they'd signed the lease, the girls living in the apartment had their things all over the place and it was kind of hard to get a sense of what, exactly, they were signing up for. Now, stripped bare and clean, it seemed like a different place. A good place, like his mom said.

They'd been unloading things slowly, a bit at a time, Lance nervous about moving too much in before Keith and his family got a chance to check things out. But after an hour, Lance's dad pulled him aside. “You might want to text your friend, Lance,” he said. “See where he is. This storm's going to break soon and we should get everything in before it does.”

“Yeah,” Lance said, and pulled out his phone, frustrated. He and Keith had agreed on this: they would arrive at the same time, they would share the cleaning duties, they would help set up each other's furniture and things. So where on earth was he? Instead of texting, Lance pulled up Keith's number and called him. They hadn't actually spoken on the phone before, which was maybe sort of weird. It rang for a while, and then went to voicemail. Lance hung up. Frowning, he sent off a text: “What's going on? You almost here?” Then, he went back to hauling the rest of his things inside, where his mom was already starting to fill the kitchen cabinets with dishes, his pots and pans stacked on the table waiting for their storage rack to be put together. Laura was in his bedroom, trying valiantly to reach the top dresser drawer and put away his t-shirts; he couldn't see Davy, which was concerning. His little brother had a tendency to get into trouble when no one was looking.

“Did you hear from your friend?” his dad asked.

Lance shook his head. “Not yet,” he said. “I swear, he's a responsible guy, you don't have to worry. Something must have come up.”

“Hmm,” his dad said, and ruffled Lance's hair. “I wouldn't worry about it. But he's going to get wet in a minute or two.”

Sure enough, the rain broke through the clouds not long after. With five people in the small apartment it felt crowded, but in a cozy way. Lance successfully wrangled Davy into putting pants on hangers and into the closet, which he could just barely reach. Rain drummed against the bedroom window, bringing the smell of wet asphalt and damp earth. The hydrangea tree outside bowed under the weight of the summer storm. Laura was making Lance's bed, one of her usual chores at home. Looking at his siblings there, working to help him out, something inside Lance caught and cracked—he was going to miss these kids. He'd loved being the youngest, early on in his family. His older brother and sister always looked out for him, taught him things, made sure no one gave him a hard time in school. And then when his father died, and a few years later his mom remarried a man with two small kids of his own, Lance spent their first few months together as a family resentful and angry. But his new dad was so patient, and clearly loved his mom, and the kids followed Lance around wanting him to teach them things, and it was hard to stay mad when a three-year-old needed help tying their shoes. And now they were here, and Lance was getting ready to leave his family for the next four months. They'd driven up here but he would be flying home for winter break, and until then there would be phonecalls and texts but he wouldn't wake up to his little sister jumping on his bed, or his mom's voice calling him from the kitchen.

Lance turned away and scrubbed a hand over his eyes. This was normal. Kids his age went off to college and left their families for a little while. He could do this. In the kitchen, his dad was assembling the butcher-block countertop cart, fighting with an allen wrench and tiny wooden pegs. Lance went to give him a hand. The rain pounded on, loud against the thin glass of the windows.

It wasn't until later, almost two o'clock in the afternoon, when Lance and his family were finally sitting down to eat lunch—pizza delivered from a local place downtown—that Lance's phone buzzed, and then the doorbell rang. “Sorry,” the message from Keith on his phone read. Lance scraped his chair back and went to open the building's front door. Standing there on the porch, drenched, with a single suitcase, a duffel bag, and a wet cardboard box in his arms, was Keith.

“Keith. What the hell? Are you all right?” Lance asked, reaching out to take the box. It came apart in his hands. “What— How did you get here?” There weren't any other cars on their street.

“Bus,” Keith said, hitching up his grip on the duffel. His hair was in his eyes and he was looking at his feet, not at Lance. “Can I come in?” he asked, and actually sounded hesitant. Lance just looked at him for a second. Keith shifted his feet.

“Of course,” Lance said. “Yeah, of course, come on.” He stepped aside to let Keith come in and drip on the carpet in the entryway.

“Sorry I missed your call earlier,” Keith said. “And for being late.”

“It's okay. I mean, I hope you don't mind, my family kind of moved everything in already. We were going to wait for you but . . . then this rain came, you know?” They were still standing in the hallway. Thunder rumbled outside. Keith still wouldn't meet Lance's eyes. “Are you all right, man?” Lance asked.

“I'm fine.”

“You look a little—”

“I said I'm fine, Lance.” Keith finally looked up, squared his chin. Pushed his bangs out of his eyes.

“If you say so,” Lance said, but he didn't mean it. They'd talk about this later, after his family left. If they were going to be living together, that meant they were friends, and Lance didn't let his friends stand out in the rain looking like shit. That was one of his rules for life, along with always setting up the coffee pot the night before, and never walking three abreast on a sidewalk. He had a whole list.

“Lance? Is that Keith?” his mom called from the end of the hall.

“Yes,” Lance called back. “Come on,” he said to Keith. “I'll introduce you to my family. I was going to show them around campus after lunch so you'll have the place to yourself for a bit. Is that all right?”

“Fine.”

“Can you try to say more than that one word to my family, please? I want them to like you.”

Keith stared at him a minute and frowned, but then nodded. “I will,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't apologise, just— Never mind.” Lance led the way inside. His parents were standing beside the table, the kids still eating, more focused on food than visitors. “This is my friend Keith,” Lance introduced him. “Keith, that's my mom, my dad, and my little brother Davy, and my little sister Laura. Say hi, kids.”

“Hi,” they responded in unison. They were in that phase lately, doing everything at the same time. It was sort of annoying, but also pretty cute.

“It's good to meet you, Keith,” Lance's dad said, stepping forward and taking Keith's hand. Keith looked dazed for a second before responding to the handshake.

“Nice to meet you too, sir,” he said.

Lance's dad laughed. “No need for that,” he said. “Sit down, eat with us. Or would you rather dry off first? It looks like you got caught in the storm.”

“I'll get you a towel, Keith,” Lance's mom said. “Just take a seat, don't worry about the floor. It's only linoleum. It will dry.”

“Thank you,” Keith said. “I'm sorry I wasn't here to help out earlier.”

“We managed,” Lance's dad said. “Almost everything is set up, so we'll leave you and Lance to sort out the details. You boys will have to decide where you want the furniture and all that.”

“I took a bedroom already,” Lance said, as his mom came back and handed a towel to Keith. “They seemed identical to me, but if you mind I'll swap with you.”

“I don't mind.” Keith toweled off his hair and pulled off his very wet jacket. Seeing him at a loss for where to put it, Lance's mom stepped up and took it out of his hands.

“I'm going to hang this in the shower, all right?” she asked. He nodded.

“Have a seat, Keith,” Lance's dad said. “Davy, pass the pizza, please. Laura, can you pour him something to drink?”

Keith slid into a chair, damp jeans sticking to the wood. “Thank you,” he told Lance's siblings as they served him.

“Where's your umbrella?” Laura asked, kicking his chair a bit. “Don't you have one?”

“No, I don't.”

“That's silly. You should get one.”

While the kids pestered Keith with questions and he slowly started eating his slice of pizza, Lance's dad put a hand on his shoulder and steered him into the bathroom, where his mom was waiting. “Lance, is he all right?” his dad asked softly. They stood shoulder to shoulder, the three of them in the little bit of bare floorspace between sink and shower. “Did he talk to you?”

“Not really,” Lance said. “He said he took a bus here, and then I guess he walked from the nearest stop. I thought . . . I thought his parents would be bringing him.”

“Is that what he told you?” Lance's mom asked.

“No, I just figured, you know. It's move-in day. Your parents come. Right?”

Lance's mom hugged him. “In an ideal world,” she said. “Yes. Do you know about his family? Does he talk about them?”

“No, he's sort of private.”

“Hmm. Do you want us to do anything for him?” Lance's dad asked.

“I told him that I'd show you and the kids around campus. I think he wants some time alone, to get things sorted out.”

“Fair enough. But keep an eye on him, all right? And here,” his dad said, taking out his wallet. “Buy the kid dinner on us, all right?” He handed Lance a twenty-dollar bill. “And call if you need anything later.”

“Call even if you don't need anything,” his mom said, and hugged him again.

“I will,” Lance said, fighting back that tight feeling in his throat again. They all maneuvered their way out of the bathroom and back into the kitchen, where Davy was sitting cross-legged in his chair and studying Keith as he ate.

“Personal space, Davy,” Lance reminded the kid. “We talked about this.”

“It applies to Keith, too?”

“Yes, it applies to Keith too.”

“Oh.” Davy scooted back a little, and Keith's shoulders shook in a way that might actually have been a laugh.

“Get your raincoats, kids,” Lance's mom said. “We're going to look around campus, and then we have to get back on the road.”

“Keith, it was good to meet you,” said Lance's dad, putting a hand on the top of Keith's head. “Sorry we couldn't stay longer, but it's a long drive and I have to be back at work tomorrow. You take care of yourself, all right?”

“Yes, sir,” Keith said. “Thank you.”

“I'll be back in a little bit, okay? Make yourself comfortable. If you want to move anything, go for it, but maybe wait on the couch. I already whacked my ankle on it once, so if you want to move that let's do it together.” Lance pulled on his raincoat and grabbed a baseball cap out of his duffel bag. “Text me if you think of anything we're missing, too. I'll get it while we're driving around.”

“You could come with us, if you want,” Lance's mom said to Keith.

“I— Thanks, but I think I'll stay here.”

“Get out of your wet clothes, at least. You don't want to get sick now at the start of the school year.” Lance's mom patted Keith on the back as she passed to go into the hall, ushering the kids out in front of her.

“See you in a bit, okay?” Lance asked him.

Keith nodded. “Yeah.”

“You'll be here when I get back?”

“Where else would I go?” Keith asked.

“Just checking.” Lance grinned. “Later!”

And they left, and Keith was alone in their apartment, damp and quiet. He still had one of Lance's towels around his shoulders, the slice of pizza half-eaten on his plate. For a minute—just a minute, he could allow that much—he dropped his head to the table and closed his eyes. Then he stood, cleared off the table, and started to get himself together so that by the time Lance returned, Keith would be absolutely fine, and they wouldn't have to talk about anything more serious than where to put the couch, and who got which shelves in the fridge. That was the plan. Keith liked plans, was good at keeping to them. As long as he could make it through the year with all his plans intact, everything would work out. He could keep going.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that it's been something like a month since the last update; I didn't plan for that, but gradschool (as it does) got in the way. My hope is that now, as we're heading into the summer, I'll have a little more time to spend writing this. Thank you so much to everyone who's taken the time to comment and leave me your thoughts, whether here or over on tumblr @stick-around-town. I really appreciate the support you're giving this story!
> 
> Also, we will eventually learn more about what Keith's deal is. Next chapter is (I think?) going to finally have these different groups of people crossing over, because so far we've had Lance-Keith-Shiro, Lance-Hunk, Hunk-Pidge, Pidge-Allura, and Shiro-Allura, but never all together. So that will happen soon, and the pace of character development will start to pick up, with more focus on the present and less on the past.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the updated tags. I'll also say that this chapter deals with panic attacks, so if that's something that's going to be difficult for you to read, proceed with caution. More notes at the end.

CHAPTER FOUR

 

**[May—spring semester, two years ago]**

Keith didn't meant to scowl as he ran across campus, dodging puddles—it was just sort of his default expression, these days. It was the first week of May, or the last week of classes, depending on how you looked at it. The morning had been hazy and hot, and sometime between Keith entering the library and getting a text from Lance about free food somewhere on the engineering quad, the weather apparently decided it wasn't shitty enough. Keith's sneakers were wet and his hoodie did little to keep the rain off his hair, already damp from sweat. If he wasn't so hungry he wouldn't be doing this. He'd only properly started talking to Lance about a week ago. But, he figured, if they were going to be roommates for the next year, they should at least test out each other's company. Figure out how much of each other they were able to stand.

He'd been surprised to get a text from an unknown number that turned out to be someone he'd only ever thought of as “that Lance kid from our disaster first-year floor,” or sometimes, “that Lance kid who is somehow always at the center of all this noise.” Neither were particularly good qualities for a future roommate, but the fact remained that Keith had an absolutely terrible housing lottery number and needed to be realistic. Also, he wasn't above using intimidation tactics, where need be. Lance looked like someone he could intimidate if he had to. So he'd texted Lance back and they agreed to meet at the cafe outside the main campus library later that week, and when it was clear that even if they both got on each other's nerves a bit, there was at least grudging respect. Plus, Keith had to admit, Lance on his own, chewing the straw of an iced coffee across a tiny table, was very different than the loud guy he'd always noticed in the crowd down the hall. This Lance was sarcastic and smart, and he waited for Keith to answer after he asked a question—even when it took Keith a long time to reply. And that wasn't something a lot of people did. So when Lance asked him outright if he thought they could live together, Keith thought about it a moment and then said yes. He had to duck his head at the wide smile that broke out across Lance's face at his answer, not wanting his new roommate to see that he was smiling too.

He wasn't smiling now, scuffing his sneakers on the floormat in the lobby of one of the engineering buildings. But there was Lance waiting, sitting on the stairs, grinning up at him. “Keith! You came.”

“You said there would be food,” Keith said, as if that was an answer.

“There is. My buddy Hunk—I'll introduce you—said that there was some event that got cancelled but they'd already ordered the catering, so we're in luck. Come on, it's in the atrium over this way.”

There were a few long folding tables set up in a wide hall with floor-to-ceiling windows. Keith recognised it from seeing the outside, the view it had over one of the main campus roads. He'd never been inside before, though. It was crowded with people, noisy from voices echoing and the rain against the glass. Lance stood on his toes, trying to see over the crowd. “There he is! Come on,” Lance said, and grabbed Keith by the wrist, dragging him into the room before Keith had a chance to protest. “Hunk! There you are. Meet my friend Keith.” Lance pulled Keith up to stand next to him and gestured to the guy in shorts and a sweatshirt standing there in front of them. “Keith, this is Hunk.”

“Nice to meet you, Keith,” said Hunk, and he reached out his hand.

Keith took it and shook, shaking Lance's hand off his wrist in the same motion. “You too,” he said.

“Get some food, you guys,” Hunk said. “There's a lot now but one of the lectures gets out in about ten minutes so you came at a good time.”

“Yes! You're the best, man.” Lance dodged a throng of students to grab a plate and then Keith lost sight of him.

“Seriously, help yourself,” Hunk told him, and so Keith did. Free food wasn't exactly rare on a college campus, but this was more than just room-temperature pizza. Whatever event they'd been planning had been catered from one of the local Indian restaurants. His plate full, Keith edged around a trio of older students and found his way back to Lance and Hunk who were sitting on a bench near a section of the window.

Keith was mostly silent while Lance and Hunk talked. Though they acted like old friends, they'd actually only met back in February. As they swapped stories, Keith reminded himself to eat slowly, and thought about how he could smuggle some back to his dorm, if there was any left. He should've brought a tupperware. The paper plates were too flimsy to be useful.

“So Lance and I bonded over the weather when we met,” Hunk turned and said to Keith, startling him out of his thoughts of food. “And here we are again, miserably wet. Where are you from, Keith?”

“Um, New York.”

“Like, the city?”

“Yeah,” Keith said, and swallowed his mouthful of daal. “Flushing.”

“What?” Lance and Hunk ask, nearly in tandem.

“My neighbourhood,” Keith explained. “Flushing, Queens.”

“That's a seriously weird neighbourhood name, Keith,” Hunk told him.

“It's not like I chose the name,” Keith said, poking at his naan. He didn't choose to live there, either.

“That's so cool that you live in New York City!” Lance waved his plastic fork. “I've never been there. What's it like?”

“It's . . . big. It's a city. I don't know.”

“I mean, do you live in some high-rise apartment? Did you take the subway to school? Have you been to all sorts of museums? Have you seen famous people?” Lance asked. “Have you been to Central Park?”

“Lance, slow down,” said Hunk, laughing, but he leaned forward, angling towards Keith, clearly interested.

“Not really,” Keith said.

“None of those?” Lance asked.

“Museums, famous people, and Central Park are all in Manhattan.”

Lance looked confused still. “Which means . . . what?”

“Which means it's a train ride away and sort of a pain.” Keith stabbed a wayward lentil with his fork. “I went to school a few blocks from the apartment I lived in, which was not a highrise. Mostly I got around on my bicycle. Sorry to disappoint you.”

“But—”

“It's still interesting,” Hunk cut in, elbowing Lance. “And not disappointing, are you kidding? I'd love to see it. I've hardly even left Hawaii since coming to this country. Getting here was one of the biggest trips I've taken.”

“Yeah, my parents drove me up here all the way from Florida but it's not like we had much time to spare for sightseeing,” said Lance. He shot a look at Keith, just briefly. “Sorry for prying, man. I was just curious.”

“Yeah,” Keith said, which sort of put an end to that conversation. Or, he thought it did. When Lance sauntered over to the food again, though, Hunk slid down the bench to sit next to Keith.

“Hey,” he said, “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“You didn't,” said Keith. Hunk gave him a look. Keith hadn't known him for more than an hour but he knew that look. It was a calling-you-on-your-bullshit look. He felt his cheeks flushing and looked away.

“Yeah, okay, we'll say that,” Hunk said slowly. “But listen, Keith. I know all about being evasive about where you come from, or why you come from there. It's not like it was the easiest thing, immigrating here when I was a kid. And it's fine now but there were years that it was hard, and I think you'll find that Lance gets it, too. You don't have to be cagey with us.”

Keith stared out the window, watching students huddled under umbrellas make their way across campus. “It's not a question of being cagey,” he finally said, “so much as not wanting to talk about it, at all.”

“Cagey,” Hunk said.

“No, cagey is when you say a little bit, but not too much. I don't want to say anything.”

Hunk watched him a minute. Lance was still off in the crowd somewhere, either distracted by food or he'd run into someone else. Shifting closer, Hunk asked, “Are things not good at home?”

Keith leaned against the window, feeling the chill of the glass through his damp sweatshirt. “You're pushing it,” he said, a warning note in his voice.

“I know.”

“Do you?” Keith asked, turning on him. “You don't know me at all.”

“I know Lance trusts you, so that means I trust you. And I know evasive actions when I see them, my friend. So what else should I know?”

“Don't push me,” Keith said. “You don't stand a chance.”

“I'm not looking to fight you, Keith.”

“Then drop it.”

Hunk sighed. “All right, all right,” he said, and Keith let his shoulders relax a fraction, thinking it was over. Then Hunk's arm shot out and somehow got behind Keith's shoulders, and before he knew it he was pulled into a hug. Somewhat sideways, and awkward as they were both seated on the same bench, but still—Keith couldn't remember the last time he'd been hugged. He froze for a second and then shoved back against Hunk's broad chest. Hunk let himself be pushed back and Keith shot to his feet.

“Don't,” he said, hands fisting at his sides.

“Keith! Leaving already?” Lance wound his way through the crowd and back to them, two plates of food balanced over his head. “I brought you seconds.”

“Sit down,” Hunk said. “Eat more.” He slid back on the bench, putting some distance between the two of them but still studying Keith's face. “We'll get Lance to tell us about the latest prank he's pulled on his roommate.”

“Oh, you guys won't even believe it,” Lance said, and launched into a story that Keith barely followed. His heart was racing, loud in his ears, as he forced his hands to relax enough not to crush the plate of food. While Lance talked and Hunk laughed, Keith sat there, back to the window, and tried to ignore the phantom feeling of someone else's arms on his. He caught Hunk glancing at him once and stiffened, eyes narrowing. Hunk shook his head slowly and then turned his gaze back to Lance.

By the time they finally parted ways that night, Keith's jaw hurt from clenching his teeth. Standing in the tiny dorm shower that night he scrubbed and scrubbed, and stared at the tile wall, and forced his breath to come evenly. Hunk was far too perceptive, he decided; Lance, at least, was easy enough to fool.

 

 

**[September—fall semester, this year]**

Saturday morning comes around again and finds Shiro standing in his pajama pants in his kitchen, hot and annoyed at the sunshine streaming in through the blinds. Last week had been pleasantly cool, the promise of an early fall, but now summer's back, unwelcome. His hair is sticking to his forehead. Squinting, half-asleep, he makes a pot of coffee and mechanically spreads peanut-butter over a slice of bread, not even toasted. When the coffee's done he reaches up to get a mug out of the cabinet and grimaces. One of these days, he thinks, he'd like to wake up and not feel like he just got run over. Shiro's been run over before. He knows what it feels like. And he'd rather not relive it every morning of every single day.

He drinks his coffee while scrolling through news headlines on his phone, a process made sort of cumbersome by only having one hand. The constant switching of coffee mug for phone is tiresome but not enough to make him get his prosthetic. Eventually, though, he has to get up from the cool of the linoleum floor and be a real person again, and having two arms is generally helpful for that. Not required, but useful, if for nothing else then as a preventative measure against questions he doesn't ever feel like answering.

Allura hadn't asked anything. He thinks about her while washing his mug and knife, the bare minimum of breakfast dishes. She'd looked, and noticed, but hadn't asked. Shiro hasn't met many people like that. Keith, back when they first sparred, had been the same; Lance hasn't asked but Shiro figures Keith probably told him not to, since Keith did—once—get the full story out of Shiro, one spring night two years ago when they were both tired enough to let their guards down. And those two science-major friends of Keith's, or friends of Lance's, he isn't sure. Though they'd asked all kinds of questions about the mechanisms and the circuitry and the design specs of his arm had never once asked after the hows and whys of it all.

It's not that everyone he ever meets, grocery store clerks and bus drivers and library circulation staff and the like, always ask. But for every ten who don't say anything, there's one who does, and somehow that one sticks in his mind long after everything else. And sure, he has his catalogue of stock responses, the ways he deals with stupid questions, just like anyone else. But it's nice, and not something he takes for granted, when he meets someone new and they surprise him. Allura had surprised him.

These days, most of the people he sees, apart from his professors, are quite a few years younger than him. Which means that most of his friends are younger than him. And that's fine, he enjoys hanging out with Keith and everyone. It would be good to spend time with someone closer to his own age. He suspects that Allura might still be younger than him—it's hard to tell—but maybe the gap in years is closer at least, plus she's a Ph.D. candidate, not an undergrad. It would be nice to have a friend who understands what he's going through. They could help each other, even. That's what friends do, right?

There's a voice in Shiro's head that tells him he's being naive and ridiculous when he pulls on a loose tank-top and workout pants and heads out the door to go to morning yoga, but he pushes it aside and resolves to try it one more time. If he still makes a fool of himself, if Allura's not there, if she's there but doesn't talk to him, then he'll go and not come back. But he knows that if he just sits around at home this morning, his mind won't be on work. He might as well go and if all he gets out of it is a different kind of soreness in his body, then that's fine.

He does still kind of make a fool of himself, especially when the same older lady from last time leads the class into a split and Shiro's hips protest and he basically falls over sideways and gets stuck, but Allura is there. She arrived after him, actually, and set up her mat next to his though there were other empty spaces. He has to keep reminding himself, when they twist and pose, the voice in his head now suspiciously like his old drill instructor's: “Eyes front, soldier.” They don't talk during the class but when it ends, and Shiro's thighs are burning as he squats to roll up his mat, Allura comes over and crouches next to him. “Hello again, Shiro,” she says.

“Hi.”

“How was your week?”

“Oh, you know,” he says, standing. “The usual.”

“Long, stressful?”

“Yes, basically. And yours?”

“The same. It's good to see you again. I wasn't certain you'd come back.”

“I couldn't focus this morning,” Shiro tells her. Her hair's gotten curlier at the nape of her neck, damp with sweat. He looks away. “And my arm's been hurting, so . . .”

“Did the class help?”

“Not really.” Shiro drops his mat off, Allura following him. He flexes his right arm experimentally. “It still hurts to lift it over my head. I'll get to tell my friend he was wrong, at least.” He turns to smile at Allura but she's frowning at him.

“This class isn't really the best one for muscle relaxant purposes,” she says. “It's a bit intense for that. There's one on Thursday evenings that might help more.”

“It's all right,” Shiro says. “I don't think I'm really suited to yoga, anyway. You saw me fall, remember?”

“Everyone falls sometimes.”

“Hmm.”

They're on their way out of the studio, halfway down the metal fire-escape stairs, when Shiro works up the courage to ask the question that's been on his mind since Allura walked into the class: “Are you hungry? I was thinking of getting lunch.”

“Oh, Shiro, I'm sorry,” she says. “I have to be somewhere.”

“Right,” he says. “No, that's fine.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't worry about it.” He smiles at her again.

“I have to run, but I'll see you again soon, yes?”

“Sure.” Shiro waves as Allura jogs off, turning the corner in a blur of white hair and a swinging duffel bag. “Sure,” he repeats, quieter, to himself. He sighs, stuffs his hands in his pockets, and heads for the bus station.

*

It's Friday when they see each other again. In the days that have passed, Shiro's kept his mind on work. He has some post-doc applications due soon and they're more than enough to occupy all his waking hours. So when he turns around at the circulation desk in the main campus library to see blue eyes and white hair in line behind him it takes him a second to recognise Allura. By the time his brain kicks into gear he's ready to make his excuses and leave but she gestures for him to wait a minute. He steps aside, books heavy in his arms. “Shiro!” she says, coming over to him. “What great timing. I was just about to have a cup of coffee. Join me?”

“I should get back to work,” he says.

“Please? My treat.”

“No, that's not—” Shiro starts to protest, and then shakes his head. “I'll join you, but I'm paying.”

“Oh, a gentleman,” she teases, and leads the way into the library café. It's crowded, as it always is, but they drop their books off at a small table that someone's just leaving and go to wait in line. Shiro buys them both coffees—a latte for him, some kind of fancy iced thing for Allura—and they slide into their chairs, knees touching under the table. Shiro tenses and goes to move away but Allura doesn't move, so then he doesn't either.

“It occurred to me,” she says, “that I don't have your phone number. I was going to text you to get dinner on Saturday, since I couldn't do lunch, but then I didn't know how to reach you. And when I typed Shiro into the campus email directory, nothing came up.”

“Oh,” Shiro laughs. “That's, uh, probably because it's not really my name. My last name is Shirogane. Some friends of mine used to call me Shiro and it seemed easier, so that's what I go by.” Some army friends of his, he means—to them it was a nickname, whereas these days it's mostly so he doesn't have to listen to people mispronounce his proper name, or put the accent on the wrong syllable.

“What's your first name?”

“Takashi, but really, you can call me Shiro.”

“Well, all right,” Allura says. “If you like.”

Shiro nods. “I can give you my number,” he says.

“Yes, do.” Allura takes out her phone and passes it to Shiro. He enters his contact info and hands it back to her. “And I'll text you, so you have mine. There.”

Shiro looks at his phone. Allura's sent him her full name—Allura Alteana—plus a star emoji. “Great,” he says, and pockets it. “So, what are you doing here? I would've guessed most of your materials were in Haskell Library, if not online.”

“Most, but not all. I was actually dropping some things off as a favour to my research assistant, though.”

“So I'm not the only one whose research assistant ends up needing assistance,” Shiro laughs. “I'm always doing things for Keith. To be fair, he did feed me the other day.”

“I don't know that I would trust Pidge to feed me.”

“Pidge?”

“My research assistant's name,” Allura says.

“Small kid, big glasses, dresses like a lax bro?”

“What is a lax bro?”

“You know—” Shiro gestures, unhelpfully. “Backwards cap, athletic socks, tank top, flowy hair. A lacrosse player.”

“I play lacrosse.”

“Oh,” Shiro says, and his mind temporarily sidetracks.

“But yes,” Allura says, tapping Shiro's foot with hers and bringing his focus back, “based on that description, it sounds my Pidge is your Pidge. Which would make sense, it's not a very common name.”

“I think they're friends with Keith. We've met before.”

They discover that they have a few more friends and acquaintances in common, which isn't rare—the graduate students are a much smaller part of campus than the undergrads—but is a bit unusual, given that Shiro is in the humanities and Allura is in the sciences. What it seems to come down to, besides them both apparently frequenting the same downtown coffee shops, though never at the same time, is Keith serving as an unlikely pivot point. Keith's roommate Lance is friends with Pidge's roommate Hunk, and so they're all just a few degrees of separation from each other. “We should all get together sometime,” Allura says, and Shiro agrees but privately thinks it would be a bit of a trainwreck, all of them in the same space.

They're companionably quiet for a while, drinking their coffee and watching the students come in and out, everyone overburdened with backpacks and thermoses even though they're only about a month into the semester. The pace never seems to let up.

“How's your research going?” Shiro asks.

“Now, that's a loaded question,” Allura laughs.

“I mean— You don't have to answer, I just thought, you know. You seem to have everything under control.”

“Oh, Shiro. Thank you. I wish that were the case.” Allura pokes at her drink with her straw. “No, it's going all right, I've just been so busy working on grant applications that I hardly have time to think about the next steps of my project. And I promised Coran that I'd have updated results of this tracking algorithm that Pidge has been helping me with, but the equation isn't producing the results we want. I had to send Pidge home this morning. They'd been in the lab all night, working straight through, even though when I left last night at ten I definitely told them to go to sleep.”

“And what time did you get back in this morning?”

“Eight, of course.”

“Of course,” Shiro says, and looks at Allura for a minute until she takes his point. “You should go home, too. Get some rest.”

“Man can't live on caffiene alone, and all that?” Allura asks him.

“Yes.”

“And how many hours of sleep did you get last night, Shiro?”

“I was in bed by midnight.”

“You're very good at hedging your answers. In bed doesn't mean sleeping, though.”

“No, well . . . sleep is difficult to come by, these days.” Shiro runs a hand through his hair and rubs the back of his neck.

“Is it your dissertation, or something else?”

“Currently, it's a pile of student essays that need grading, and post-doc applications. But my main advisor has set a deadline for early November, for a revised version of my entire dissertation, so that's looming somewhere in the background. I'll have to get back to it after the weekend.”

“Are you defending in December, then?”

“No, not until May. With the way the job market works though, I should really have everything finished by January so that if I get any interviews, I can discuss my work as a finished project and start talking up a second book.”

“And do you have ideas for a second book?”

“Not really. I hardly have ideas to finish this one.”

“You said secret military societies, right?” Allura asks, leaning forward to prop her elbows on the table. “Does that mean classified, or can you tell me about it?”

Shiro laughs. “I can tell you,” he says. “The main focus of my research is this Serbian secret military society active in the early twentieth century called The Black Hand.”

“Oh, wait, they're the ones behind the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, yes?”

“Yes, they planned his assassination in 1914, and were one of the major forces responsible for starting the first World War. The group itself solidified in 1911 as a combination of conspiracy propaganda and a sort of military power-play against the government, but its members were active earlier as well.”

“I do remember some history lessons,” Allura says, “although that was years ago. But that's about as much as I know about them.”

“There's a lot more to it, but the gist of it is that a few men, from the summer of 1901 to the spring of 1917, dramatically affected the course of world events without really planning to do so.”

“You say 'affected' when you could say 'doomed,' ” Allura notes. “Do you not see them as the villians of our history, then?”

“I see them as villianous, and also as tragic. A lot of their members were young men, idealists, zealots perhaps, but they didn't really understand what they were getting into. Of course we look back now and say, well, Gavrilo Princip shot the Archduke and his wife in Sarajevo and brought about the Austro-Hungarian empire's invasion of Serbia, which spiraled into a worldwide war thanks to a variety of decades-old international alliances, which led to more than sixteen million deaths, and so on and so forth. But before all of that, Princip was a young man who thought he was doing what was best for his country, and ended up losing a limb and dying in prison of tuberculosis at age twenty-three. He tried twice to kill himself before that, too, when he was only nineteen. Failed, obviously.” Shiro pauses and fiddles with the cardboard sleeve from his coffee cup. “I guess I find it interesting, what happens to our perception of individuals within broader historical events.”

“Twenty-three,” Allura says. “He was even younger than we are.”

Shiro nods. “That's Keith's age. He's twenty-three, almost twenty-four. I wonder sometimes . . .”

“Yes?”

“You won't say anything to anyone, will you?”

“Shiro, of course not. I promise you that whatever you'd like to talk about will stay between us.”

“Thank you.” Shiro slowly tears his coffee sleeve into bits. “I suspect that Keith was in the military before coming here, or at least something like ROTC, though he doesn't talk about it. I think he's one of those idealistic young men who ended up in difficult circumstances, except unlike Princip, somehow Keith made it out and ended up here. Studying history.”

“Trying to learn from his past.”

“Or better his future.” Shiro crosses his arms over his chest. He's well aware that they're not only talking about Keith anymore.

“I think it's admirable,” Allura tells him.

“What is?”

“What Keith is doing. What you're doing. Not Princip, because it's difficult for me to find anyone who takes another's life admirable, but I suppose to some he might have been.”

“Allura, I—” The words catch in Shiro's throat. He tightens his fingers around his arms, the right ones responding a fraction of a second slower than the left. If he speaks now, he knows he'll ruin everything. “I should go,” he manages, and stands up. “Thanks for the company.”

He walks out with Allura calling after him, shouldering his bag and pushing his way through a crowd of students trying to enter the café. He's taller than them but ducks easily enough, disappearing into the lunch-time rush until he can exit the library. The sun outside is blinding and he can't breathe for a second, wincing as he stands there on the patio and sees himself back in Afghanistan, harsh skies over bright sand, dull grass, the taste of dust in his mouth. Then someone bumps into him from behind; he stumbles and reaches automatically for the gun he hasn't carried in years, panics when his hand finds only the strap of his backpack. The kid who walked into him throws a shout of “Sorry, man!” over his shoulder as he runs off to class and Shiro stands there, unable to move, in the middle of the doorway. Everything is on fire. The clock tower across the quad chimes out quarter past the hour and the deep ringing sound of the bells brings him back, enough to force his legs to carry him out of the doorway and around the corner of the building. He collapses there, sinking down with his back against rough stone, eyes wide, hands shaking, even the prosthetic one. Shiro fumbles for his phone, drags it out of his pocket and nearly drops it. It takes all his concentration to enter his passcode and hit recent calls.

“Shiro? What's up?”

“I need— Fuck, Keith, I need you to come get me.”

 

 

**[March—spring semester, two years ago]**

The Monday after Spring Break found Keith and Shiro in their usual hole-in-the-wall restaurant downtown. The proprietor knew them, liked to speak Korean with Keith, gave them various small side dishes for free along with their noodles. Today when they'd walked in, he'd taken one look at them and shouted something to the cooks; not even five minutes after they were seated an enormous plate of pajun was brought over to their table. “Eat,” the proprietor had said, so they ate.

Keith had come back from the break with bruised knuckles and a black eye. When he showed up to sparring practice with Shiro, angry and looking for a fight, Shiro had let him take a swing, handily slipped behind him and pinned his arms, and declared that they were going out for a late dinner instead. Cutting up his pajun, Keith glanced up at Shiro, who was still staring at him with some unreadable expression. It wasn't pity. Keith knew pity.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Ask me what's obviously on your mind.”

“What happened, Keith?” Shiro asked.

“Got in a fight, of course.” Keith stuffed food in his mouth and glared at Shiro. With anyone else, it would've made them drop the subject.

“With whom?”

“Anyone else would've just said 'who,' you know, Professor Shirogane.”

“You're dodging the question, Keith.”

“Yeah.”

They ordered their main dishes. Keith kicked at the table legs. “All right, fine. What did you do over break, then?” Shiro asked, still looking at Keith.

“That's the same question, and you know it.”

“I do.”

“I don't want to talk about it, Shiro. I want to eat more jja jjang myun than one person should, and then go back to my dorm room and take a nap.”

“You went home, didn't you?”

“I wouldn't call it that.”

“Back to New York?” Shiro pressed.

Keith sighed, looked up at the ceiling. It was useless. After knowing Shiro for a little over a year now, he knew that it was useless to try to avoid some things, and this was apparently one of them. He took a deep breath, held it a minute. This had to happen, sooner or later. “Yeah,” Keith said, resigned. “I went back to New York. Couldn't stay here. My dorm was closing for plumbing repairs and I didn't have anywhere else to go, so. . .”

“Next time you need a place to stay,” Shiro said, kicking him under the table to make sure he was paying attention, “you call me. Got it?”

“What?”

“My place is small but you're always welcome, Keith.”

“I don't need— It's fine, Shiro. Don't worry about it.”

“I do worry. Deal with it. And also, I mean it. Call me any time.”

“Hmm.” Keith poked at his noodles.

“Keith, I'm serious. I want your word on this.”

A tense silence stretched between them. Shiro kicked Keith under the table again. “All right, all right,” Keith finally said. “Next time, I'll call you.”

“Good.”

“Now can we stop talking about me? What about you, what did you do over break?”

“Graded mediocre student papers. Started planning a summer research trip. Checked out far too many library books.” Shiro grinned at Keith, the tension gone. “Say, how'd you like a job as a research assistant?”

“What, for you?” Keith scoffed.

“Yes, for me. I could use some help indexing things, and a lot of the preliminary planning is tedious.”

“Oh, so you want to pawn it off to me.”

“My department has a budget for these things. I'd pay you for it.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. So what do you say?” Shiro leaned over the table, hands folded in front of him. “Want a job?”

“If it pays, then sure.”

“Great. You get to help me figure out Serbian train itineraries.”

“I hope you like hitch-hiking,” Keith said.

“Why's that?”

“With me as your road-trip planner, in a language I don't even speak? You really have to ask?”

“I have every faith in you,” Shiro said. After a pause, he added, “And Google Translate.”

“Funny, Shiro.”

“I thought so.”

They finished their meal with lighter talk, about the kids' karate class Shiro was teaching and Keith's philosophy class, the paper he had to write in two weeks. As usual, Shiro insisted on paying for dinner, though Keith spotted him the bus fare to get back up the hill. “I meant it, Keith,” Shiro said as they parted ways, and Keith nodded.

“Thanks,” he said, and punched Shiro lightly in the chest before turning away. “I know.”

*

Two weeks later, approaching the start of exams, Keith's roommate sexiled him. He'd come back from the library at one in the morning to find a post-it note on the door telling him to make himself scarce, and a door that must have been blocked from the inside because even after ignoring the note and unlocking the door, he still couldn't get into his room. “Damn it, open up!” he called, jerking on the door handle to try to free it.

“Go away!” came the response from the other side of the door.

Keith took a step back and kicked the door. It shook and creaked, but wouldn't budge. He could break it down, probably, but that would mean living in a dorm room with no door, in addition to his asshole roommate. Also, he'd probably get fined. He had fourteen dollars in his wallet, and it had to last until his next research assistant paycheck from the history department came through at the end of the month. Broke, furious, exhausted, Keith stomped down the hall to the study lounge. The chairs weren't comfortable but if he pushed two together, they could halfway pass as a bed. He'd slept in worse. It was far enough away from his room that he couldn't hear his roommate and the girl he was with, at least.

And it should have been fine, but he couldn't get his mind to settle, kept turning his anger over in the silence of the room, kept tasting it in his mouth with a tang a little like blood. He hated this. He'd had enough years of sharing a room with strangers, first in boarding school and then in the group home he'd lived in for a few months once, and instead of getting used to it, everything just became worse. Next year, when he'd be a junior, Keith swore that he was going to do whatever it took to get a place where he could have his own bedroom. Because apparently what it would take now was killing his roommate. Keith shifted, feeling the arm of the chair dig into his back. He could see the lights of campus outside, trees silhouetted against the night. It was almost two o'clock.

Shiro had said to call, and meant it. But did he mean it at two in the morning? Keith could just go back to the library—one of the study spaces was open twenty-four hours a day, and he'd napped there before without too much trouble. He was on edge, though, twitchy from nerves and stress and anger. At least if Shiro got pissed off at him for waking him, they could fight and then maybe Keith could calm down. He pulled out his phone and made the call.

It took a few rings for Shiro to answer, and his voice was rough when he did. “Keith?” he asked. “Everything all right?”

“Can I come over?” Keith asked, and winced in anticipation of the anger that had to be coming. But it didn't come.

“Of course,” Shiro said. “Yes. You know how to get here? You have my address, right?”

“Yeah. I'll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Are you all right to walk? I can come pick you up.”

“No, it's fine. I should . . . clear my head. Thanks, Shiro.”

“Text me when you get here and I'll come let you in.”

“I will.”

They hung up, and Keith slowly breathed in and out for a few minutes. Then he gathered up his backpack, flipped off his roommate down the hall, and set off into the chill of the night. The walk to Shiro's place was almost entirely downhill. The sky was cloudy and low, nothing around except a few cars speeding through the city and one stray cat in the bushes that made Keith jump and swear before he realised what it was. When he got to Shiro's house, he saw the attic apartment lights on and knew that Shiro must have gotten out of bed. Was waiting for him. “I'm here,” he texted, and waited on the porch for the door to open. Shiro looked sleep-rumpled and exhausted, all bed-head and a wrinkled t-shirt; he was smiling at Keith, but there was something guarded about his expression.

“Hey,” he said, “come on in. I'm up in the attic.”

“Thanks,” said Keith. He noticed that Shiro wasn't wearing his prosthetic. It was the first time he'd ever seen it, the scars on what was left of Shiro's right arm, the limb ending just below the elbow. They climbed the stairs, Keith behind Shiro, following close enough to see the faded marks of past stitches, the tense lines of Shiro's shoulders.

“Do you want a drink?” Shiro asked when they stepped inside his apartment. He hadn't been exaggerating; it was small, just a kitchen and a study that doubled as a bedroom, plus a tiny bathroom.

“Just water,” Keith said. He dropped his backpack by the door and toed off his sneakers. “Sorry to wake you up.”

“No, don't be. I'm glad you called me.”

“You could be sleeping now.”

“And I assume you couldn't, or you wouldn't be here.” Shiro handed him a glass of water and poured one for himself, leaned back against the fridge. “Am I right?”

“My roommate locked me out.”

“When I'm more awake, remind me to teach you how to pick a lock.”

“I know how to pick a lock. He must've had the door blocked from inside, probably a chair under the handle. He had his girlfriend over.”

“Ah. I see.”

Keith took a drink of water and looked around the kitchen. There wasn't much to it: a table and two chairs, wire crates full of books, a surprisingly large plant in the corner between the window and the fridge. “I'll get revenge on him, somehow.”

“Bring your own girlfriend over?”

“I don't have one. And no, I wouldn't do that to someone, not even him. No one deserves to be kicked out of their home.”

“Sorry, I shouldn't have said that.” Shiro yawned and stretched, his t-shirt riding up. There was a long pale scar low on his stomach. He caught Keith's eyes and dropped his shoulders, turned away. “It's been a long day and I'm not entirely awake.”

“It's okay. I should sleep, anyway.”

“Rock-paper-scissors for the bed?” Shiro asked, still not looking at him.

“No, I'm not taking your bed. The floor's fine.” Keith followed Shiro into the next room, watched as Shiro took down a spare quilt and some pillows from the closet.

“Here,” Shiro said, folding the quilt into a neat pallet. He grabbed the blanket from the foot of his bed and handed it to Keith. “It's not much, but better than the floor.”

“I appreciate it,” Keith said. They weren't words he spoke a lot, and he hoped that Shiro knew. Hoped he knew they meant something. Shiro ruffled his hair and smiled at him, this time more genuinely.

“Get some sleep, Keith. Wake me if you need anything. What time's your first class?” Shiro asked as he got into bed.

“Not until ten,” Keith said, lying back on the quilt and pulling the blanket over him.

“Then let's sleep in. I don't teach tomorrow, thankfully.”

“Sounds good. Night, Shiro.”

“Goodnight, Keith.”

The room was quiet. Keith lay there and listened to the soft sounds of Shiro's evening out until he fell asleep. Some hours later, few enough that the sun wasn't up yet, a muffled shout woke him. Keith flailed about, startled, until he remembered where he was. He sat up, untangling himself from the blanket, to see Shiro's back to him. Keith stood and took a step towards the bed. Shiro had kicked his sheets off, the quilt bunched up against the wall. He was curled into a ball, face pressed into the pillows, chest heaving with every harsh intake of breath.

“Shiro?” Keith called softly, and took another step forward. “Shiro, wake up.” Keith reached out and put a hand on Shiro's shoulder—the right one, since the left was pinned beneath him. His skin was warm and damp, even through the t-shirt. That was the only thought that had time to register before Keith found himself thrown over, head knocked against the wall, pinned to the bed and flat on his back with Shiro kneeling over him, left forearm pressing down on Keith's neck. In the pale pre-dawn light Shiro's eyes were wide and frantic. Keith wheezed.

“Shit,” Shiro gasped, and scrambled back. “Shit, Keith, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.” He crouched at the foot of the bed, left arm wrapped around himself, the right one trying but failing to complete the gesture. “I'm so sorry, fuck. Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I'm okay,” Keith said, once he got his air back. He sat up slowly, bringing a hand to the back of his head. It was tender, but he couldn't feel anything more. “Are you?”

“I'm sorry,” Shiro said again. His breath was coming too quickly, and his eyes were still too wide. Keith inched forward and Shiro backed away. “Don't touch me,” he said. “Don't want to hurt you again.”

“Shiro, you didn't hurt me. I should've known better.”

“Not your fault,” Shiro said, obviously trying to control his breathing. “Not you. I— I need—” He groaned and dropped his head between his knees, shaking.

Keith slid off the bed and opened the window. The air was cool and damp; a gentle wind blew into the room. He found a washcloth in the bathroom and wet it, and then used all his years of sneaking around as a kid in places he shouldn't have been to approach Shiro in silence and drape it on the back of his neck. Shiro spun and grabbed his wrist, his grip bruisingly tight for just a second before he let go with a horrified look on his face. “Keith, go,” he choked, dropping his head again.

“No, I'm not leaving you like this.” Keith took a step back though, and dropped to sit cross-legged on the floor. “Talk to me, Shiro.”

“Can't.”

“Yes, you can. Tell me what you're seeing.”

“Everything.”

“Start with one thing.”

“Sun. Sunlight.”

“Sunlight?” Keith asked.

“I— I know,” Shiro said, “I know it's not real. Sun's not up yet. Fuck.”

“Breathe, Shiro.”

“I can't— There's no one here, right? Keith?”

“Just us.” Keith stood up, made sure Shiro was watching as he checked out the window and through the doorway. “Do you see someone?”

“No. No, I just, I feel it, you know? Being watched.” Shiro shifted and put his back against the wall, closed his eyes. His breathing was starting to slow down but he was still frighteningly pale, the scar across his nose a dark line in the dim light. “I feel like I'm back there.”

Keith nodded and sat back down, this time a little closer. “Tell me about it?” he asked, hugging his knees to his chest. “Or should I distract you?”

“I can't tell you,” Shiro said after a moment, his jaw tight. “You shouldn't have to know.”

“I want to know. If it would help you to say it, I want to know. So come on, we'll trade.”

“Trade?”

“The reasons we each have nightmares.”

“You don't have tell me that.”

“You kind of know already.” Keith settled back in against the dresser. It was easier to talk about things if he didn't have to look at anyone. So he kept his gaze straight ahead, eyes on Shiro's prosthetic on the table beside the bed and the wall beyond, with Shiro sitting on the mattress above him and to the right. Even unnerved as he clearly was, Shiro's presence was a comforting one. Keith exhaled slowly, loosened his grip on his knees. “I got in a fight with my dad over the break. I mean, we fight a lot anyway, but I hadn't been back there in a while so I guess I thought . . . it would be okay. But it wasn't, and I just stood there, like an idiot, and let him hit me.”

“Keith—”

“Me, who has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Can you believe it? I could take my dad in a fight any day, but for some reason when he's actually standing there in front of me, drunk out of his mind, it's like I shut down. Punched a wall later, that's what happened to my hand, but I can't punch my dad. Not because I don't hate him or anything, I do kind of hate him, but it's just— It makes no sense. I don't want to hurt him. Fuck if I know why, after all he's put me through.” Keith chanced a look over at Shiro, who was finally getting some colour back in his cheeks. That was good. “I ended up sleeping in the train station and coming back here early. Climbed into my dorm through the window. I'd rather live without running water for a few days than have to go back to that apartment.”

“Don't you live on the fourth floor?” Shiro asked, quietly.

“Yeah.” The sun was rising, light filtering in slowly through the trees beyond the attic window. “Sometimes I dream about what it would be like, you know? But it wouldn't . . . I could do it, if I had to. But when I wake up afterwards it's like there's blood on my hands, and all I hear is his voice telling me I'm a disappointment. Telling me I shouldn't have dropped out of ROTC at my last school, should've been a man, made something of myself. Telling me transferring here was a waste of time. Telling me it's my fault my mom left.”

“It's not your fault, Keith.”

“I know. I was only five, I know it wasn't my fault. I know, but it doesn't change anything. She's still gone, and he's still an alcoholic. And that's my life.” Keith dropped his chin to his knees. “So that's what I dream about. Now you know. If it's ever me waking up shouting and trying to fight you, I'm not— It's not you I'm seeing. So you don't have to apologise anymore, okay? I think I understand.”

Shiro's hand was still shaking when he reached out over the edge of the bed and set it down on top of Keith's head. “Yeah,” he said, “I guess you do.” Keith leaned into Shiro's touch, resting against the side of the mattress. The sheets smelled like fabric softener. “There's a poem I like,” Shiro said after a while, his voice so quiet in the hush of the room. “It's called 'Wild Geese.' When I wake up like this, I try— It helps to think about something concrete, and that's what I think about.”

“How does it go?”

“ 'Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on.' ” Shiro looked down at Keith and smiled, soft and fond. “You told me yours, so I'll try. It's . . . difficult to talk about, though.”

“I'm listening.”

“Do you know that you're the first person since I left Toronto to see me like this? After you called, I spent the whole fifteen minutes it took you to walk down here wondering if I should put my prosthetic on. It's stupid.”

“It's not stupid.”

“And then I said, fuck it, this is Keith, he's not going to care. But even though I knew that, I still froze up when I opened the door and saw you seeing me.” Shiro ran his fingers through Keith's hair. “Thanks for not saying anything.”

“Of course, Shiro.”

“And I didn't really think about it, when I invited you over. I just knew you needed a safe place to go and that was the important thing. I've never had anyone spend the night, though, and I should've realised what would happen but I thought it would be all right, or I wasn't thinking, I don't know. Can't even get one night without . . . You said not to apologise but I'm sorry I hurt you. Don't tell me I didn't, because I know my own strength and you're going to have a hell of a headache in the morning. I was— I was dreaming about Afghanistan. It's been more than four years since I was anywhere near a desert but I woke up and all I saw was sunlight and distant mountains and I was back there, in Kandahar. My regiment was en route to this town called Marjah when the truck I was riding in hit an IED.”

Shiro went quiet then and Keith felt the hand on his head tense. He pushed himself up until he was sitting on the bed and scooted backwards, tucked in close to Shiro's left side. The hand on his head moved down; Shiro's arm wrapped around his shoulders.

“There were twelve of us in that truck,” Shiro said, not looking at him. “Five died, including my best friend from basic training. He was the driver. The rest of us were wounded but made it out. I could tell you everything: names, ranks, injuries, blood types. Even when I'm so tired I could pass out I still see their faces, or what was left of them. I can't— I can't get that out of my head, Keith. I can still feel my arm burning, the heat of the sun even in winter, the smell of engine oil and dust and tar. I wake up and my ears are ringing and it's been four years, I keep thinking that it will change, that maybe tomorrow it will be different, but it never is.”

There weren't any good words to say, not for things like this. Keith leaned in, rested his head against Shiro's, temple to temple. Time passed. “Maybe not tomorrow,” Keith said, “but someday. And until then, I'm here.”

“We're both here,” Shiro said, his breath warm against Keith's cheek. Outside, the first birds were waking up, calling softly in the brightening sky. “You don't have to go back to your dad. You can stay here whenever you need.”

“And you don't have to keep everything to yourself. You can talk to me. I know you think of me as a kid, but I'm good at listening. And I can keep my mouth shut about things. I won't tell anyone what you tell me, Shiro, I swear. You can trust me.”

“I do trust you.”

They sat there, close together, as the sun streaked across the floorboards, sparked on the metal joints of Shiro's prosthetic on the bedside table, fell golden and soft across their outstretched legs. Words caught in Keith's throat, all the things he wished he could say. He sat there and covered Shiro's hand with his own, pressed it tight against his shoulder. He closed his eyes.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a chapter that I've been thinking about for a while, and I'm not entirely happy with how it turned out but I wanted to update and continue the story for you all. I really appreciate the support you're giving it, particularly those of you who take the time to leave comments, however long or short they are. I think the reason this was difficult was because it's material I want to treat well, and there was some research involved (but my field is literature, not history, particularly not more recent history, so apologies if there are any glaring errors) but also because my anxiety was going through the roof while trying to figure out how to write Shiro's reactions and mindset, and I had to keep stepping away (and listening to Blackpink's "Playing With Fire" on repeat to distract myself). Initially the POV was going to be Shiro's for the worst of it, but I couldn't get the words right; Keith is less self-analytical, more impulsive, and so it turned out that the last section is in his POV. The words still aren't right, but it's an attempt. I should also be responsible and note that they really both should be seeing actual therapists (among other things), as while having a friend to support you is good & necessary, it's not always enough (but I made a post on my tumblr recently about why I have a hard time trusting therapists, and that was sort of in the back of my mind here, hence Keith & Shiro's resolution to try to confide in each other, rather than anyone else). But here we are. Also, the poem Shiro briefly quotes is Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese" - probably the most important poem I've ever read.
> 
> Things are getting more complicated for our space kids. There's a lot yet to come, so I hope you'll continue to support this story!


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

 

**[December—fall semester, one year ago]**

The first major storm of the season moved in overnight, and morning saw students struggling to class through knee-high snow. Shiro tugged his scarf up over his nose and hunched his shoulders against the wind. Winter was always hard on his arm. Icy air against metal was never a good combination, even less so when that metal was attached to skin. Despite his shirt, sweater, and quilted jacket, the connection points still burned; most of it was probably psychosomatic, some phantom pain or lingering nerve damage, but Shiro flinched whenever he had to step outside in weather like this.

He taught his class—a seminar on writing and revolution, this year—and sent a silent thanks to the scheduling staff that for once he was actually teaching in the same building where he had his office. His windowless office, shared with three other people, but it had his name on the door at least. Shiro had just put his notebook away in a drawer and was debating the merits of napping on his desk versus going out in search of lunch when there was a knock at the door. He looked up to see Keith standing there, leaning on the doorframe.

“Hey,” Keith said.

“Hey, Keith. Come on in.”

“No, I was just stopping by to see if you wanted to get lunch. If you're free, I mean. I don't have another class until two.”

Shiro leaned back in his chair, stretching. “Sure. Where do you want to go? Someplace close, I hope.”

“Sal's?” Keith asked, naming the café in the campus store a few buildings away.

“That works. We can talk about that conference next month, and what I need from you.”

“Ughh,” Keith groaned. “No work over lunch.” Bundling up against the cold, Shiro and Keith made their way downstairs and took the shortcut route through the basement into the building next door. Shiro was presenting an early version of his dissertation introduction at a departmental conference in January and Keith was helping him trawl through the archives for photos to put into a slideshow. Keith had an uncanny ability, despite claiming to not know what he was doing, to track down the most obscure local history museums and translate their websites into something approaching useful. Shiro was unabashedly putting it to good use, on the department's budget.

“Yes, work over lunch,” he said, shoving at Keith's shoulder as they ducked through another building rather than brave the snow outside. “No rest for the weary.”

Keith yawned as they stood in line for soup and sandwiches. Sal's café had a line of long, high windows looking out at North Campus, mostly just fields and the cross-country tracks. With the falling snow everything inside was dim, the light a pale blue-grey as it washed over tired students. No one even had the energy for a snowball fight outside—the fields were undisturbed, peaceful. Shiro nudged Keith forward as the line moved. They found seats at one of the benches against the far wall, balancing plates on their knees and warming their hands on cups of soup.

“So you have your ethics lecture at two?” Shiro asked.

“Yeah, and if McClellan didn't take attendance I wouldn't even bother. This weather just makes me want to nap.”

“You know Lance will text me if you skip out on any more classes.”

“Quit checking up on me through my roommate. Just text me yourself.”

“I do, but you never listen.”

“Lies,” Keith said, and took a massive bite of his sandwich.

“Who's lying?” someone asked, and Keith and Shiro both looked up, startled, to see Lance himself standing in front of them. “Hey guys,” Lance said. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“What are you doing here?” Keith asked.

“One, rude, and two, getting lunch, obviously. Budge over.” Lance gestured to their bench and sat down when they slid aside to make room. “It's cold as hell outside.”

“ 'Under my feet I saw a lake so frozen it seemed more glass than water,' ” Shiro said. “Cold as hell, indeed. Hi, Lance.”

“What?” Keith asked, again, looking between the two of them.

“Dante,” Shiro explained, at the same moment Lance pulled his face into a serious expression, stuck his jaw out, and said, “Professor Mode, activate!”

Keith blinked. “I'm too tired for this,” he said, and went back to his soup.

“Hey, you don't have class for a while, right?” Lance elbowed him. “Come help me introduce Shiro to some people.”

“Some people?” Shiro echoed, while Keith said, “No.”

“Shiro, you'll like them, don't worry. And Keith, you need to accept that you have friends now. Friends occasionally see each other. Friends might be persuaded to text you next time there's free food in their department. Also, movie night on Friday. Mandatory. So it's settled, you're coming.”

They ended up in a single-file line behind Lance, cutting through the snowy paths of the Arts Quad and over to Engineering across the way. Shiro looked at Lance's woolen hat with envy as the wind whipped around them; his legs were cold in his jeans, even with long johns underneath. Behind him, he could hear Keith muttering darkly at nothing in particular, or perhaps at everything. The warm blast of air once they stepped into the mechanical engineering hall was a welcome relief. Shiro pushed his hair back from his forehead and shook the snow off his shoulders, leaned over to help Keith do the same. Keith shoved his hand away but couldn't quite hide a smile. Lance was skipping ahead down a corridor, newly energised after lunch, and when they didn't immediately follow he looked back and waggled his eyebrows at them.

“Shut up, Lance.”

“I didn't say anything, Keith.”

Shiro laughed and shook his head; he gave up trying to stop their bickering two weeks ago, when the better part of a semester's worth of childish taunting finally wore him down. Nothing he said would stop it, and besides, they seemed to enjoy it. Lance got Keith into a headlock as they entered one of the labs and Shiro knew Keith's strength, knew that if he really wanted to, he could break out of it. Or just break Lance's arm. The fact that Keith was going along with it, grumbling but smiling, said a lot about their relationship. Equally as important was the fact that, since moving into an apartment with Lance in August, Keith had never once needed to call Shiro at two in the morning, never needed a place to crash for the night. Not that he wasn't welcome—Keith still came over and spent the night maybe once a month, the two of them just quietly occupying the same space together, watching old movies or eating a week's worth of rice in one sitting—but it wasn't desperation that brought him there anymore. And that was good. That, alone, endeared Lance to Shiro.

The mechanical engineering lab was a wide open space on the ground floor. Sturdy tables with piles of what Shiro assumed was not junk but actually useful material filled the room; there was a row of computers against one of the walls and what looked like a machine shop in the back, grinders and drill presses and other tools Shiro hadn't seen since high school auto shop days. Seated near the back of the room were two people, bent close together over whatever they were working on.

“Oi!” Lance called. “Look who I found.”

The two looked up and Shiro glanced at them and then at Keith, who was suddenly looking more than his usual degree of surly. Shiro took half a step in front of Keith, just in case. Hadn't Lance said they were all friends?

“Shiro, meet Hunk and Pidge. Hunk and Pidge, Shiro. And his angry shadow, but you know him already.”

“Hah,” one of the two said, hopping off the stool. “Hi, again, Keith. Hi, Shiro.” They stuck out their hand and Shiro hesitated only a moment before shaking. “I'm Pidge, by the way. Lance's introductions need work on their specificity. Also, wow, your hand is amazing.” They grasped Shiro's hand and turned it over gently, studying the fine joints of his fingers.

“Uh, thanks,” Shiro said, willing himself to relax. Keith was there at his back. Everything was fine.

“Pidge, let the man go,” said the other one, who must be Hunk. “His hand is not your new project. Oh, but it could be, that design is seriously cool but it's, what, three years old? Four?”

“Something— Something like that,” Shiro said, and cleared his throat. He felt more than saw Keith take a step closer to him as he fought not to shove his hands in his pockets.

“Guys, chill,” said Lance. “What have we talked about? People skills. People are not machines. Introduce yourselves properly. Honestly, Pidge, calling me out for bad intros, really?”

“Sorry,” Hunk said, and actually looked embarrassed. “It's none of my business, of course. I'm in mechanical engineering, junior year, starting to think about my honours thesis. Everything I see these days, my mind computes as some kind of project. But really, I'm sorry.”

“Me too,” Pidge said. “I don't even have that excuse. I'm in computer engineering, sophomore year. I just like tech.”

“And you're easily excited,” Hunk said.

“As if you can talk,” Pidge retorted.

Keith leaned over and whispered in Shiro's ear, “We can go, if you need to.” Shiro shook his head minutely, just enough for Keith to catch it. He could feel his muscles tensing, but tried to fight the urge to run.

“Please feel free to tell me to back off, but Shiro, can I look at your arm? I'm guessing it extends further than your hand?” Hunk kept his distance, but his eyes were earnest and bright. “I've never seen anything like it, that's all.”

“Neither have I,” Pidge said.

Shiro held his breath a moment. This wasn't the sort of thing his veterans' affairs counselor had told him about: people asking prying questions just because someone looked physically different. Insensitivity, or stupidity. No, this was genuine scientific curiosity, and these were Keith and Lance's friends. They had to be, because if anyone else had put Shiro on his guard like that, he suspected Keith would've taken them down. Which probably meant they should have a conversation at some point about Keith not needing to act as Shiro's personal guard. He could take care of himself. And he was supposed to be the one looking out for Keith, besides. When had he slipped up, to become the one who needed taking care of?

“All right,” he said slowly, and stripped his jacket off. He could do this. He could prove this, to himself. “Just . . . ask me before you do anything?”

“Of course,” Hunk and Pidge said in tandem, nodding along as Shiro took off his sweater and glanced over at Keith before unbuttoning his shirt and sliding the right half off. He shivered in the sudden chill, standing there in the middle of the lab in his undershirt, everyone looking at him. Keith moved to stand at his back, just barely visible in his peripheral vision, arms crossed and jaw set tight.

Pidge's fingers were gentle against the metal plate of his forearm. “Can you lift your arm for me?” they asked, and Shiro did, stretching it over his head. Pidge went up on tip-toes to get a closer look and Hunk laughed.

“Want a step-stool?” he asked.

“Hush, you,” Pidge said. “But yes.”

“Shiro, what are the touch receptors like? How sensitive is their calibration?” Hunk asked, dragging a stool over for Pidge to climb onto.

“I'm not sure how to answer that,” Shiro said. “What is sensitivity measured in?” He didn't flinch when Pidge's fingers traced the mechanical joints covering his elbow, but only from force of will.

“There's a bad joke I could make about that,” Lance said, idly twirling a screwdriver from Pidge's table, “but I will manfully refrain.”

“What Hunk means,” Pidge said, ignoring Lance, “is can you feel things like temperature changes, textures?”

“When it's this cold outside, I feel it. But I couldn't tell you if your hands are cold, or if you were wearing gloves.” Shiro lowered his arm and pointed at the connection points on his bicep. “Most of the sensation is focused around here.”

“Yeah, that would make sense,” Hunk said, bringing a tablet over. “Pidge, do you see a model number anywhere? I want to look up the schematics on this.” Pidge found the number, engraved in small letters on the band circling Shiro's bicep, and read it out to Hunk. Shiro shifted his footing as Pidge rotated his arm, willing himself to relax.

“Is this sort of thing just available online?” Keith asked, still standing there with his arms crossed, disapproval evident on his face.

“Not really,” Hunk said, and didn't elaborate.

“We could probably improve those sensors, if you're willing to let us experiment a bit,” Pidge said quietly. “I've been working on this adaptive equation that doesn't have any practical applications yet but it could—”

“Don't,” Shiro said, cutting them off, and then winced. “I mean—”

“That's okay,” Pidge replied, too quick. “Just a thought.”

“Ah! Got it,” said Hunk, across the room at an array of monitors. Lance went to lean over his shoulder and look at the schematics onscreen. “This is an older neural interface, the stuff they're using these days is a little more sophisticated. But it's good, for how old it is.” Hunk tapped at the tablet's screen a bit, rotating the diagrams, and then said, very quietly, “Oh.”

“What is it?” Pidge asked, and leaned over, looking at the screen upside down. Hunk pulled the tablet back to his chest, but it was too late.

Shiro knew what they both must have realised, from looking at the design. He'd looked at it enough times to know. His particular model was built for someone who had lost everything from a point about two inches below the elbow. At least their looking at the schematics prevented him from having to actually answer the question: How much of your arm do you still have left? Keith knew, of course, and now everyone else did, too. It was fine. He focused on his breathing while Hunk and Pidge's voices blended into the background. Keith's hand was warm on his left shoulder. Lance's eyes, always such a clear blue, looked at him briefly and then turned away.

Shiro hated this. It wasn't anything to be ashamed of—it was just a fact—and even if he looked back on the war with more bitterness than anything else, he'd been serving his country and of that, at least, he could be proud. He reached up and loosened the locking mechanism, releasing the prosthetic. “It covers a lot more than you'd think,” he said, and was grateful that his voice was deep enough that any tremors in pitch were hardly noticeable. He hefted the weight of the prosthetic in his left hand, the metal cool against his fingers. “They told me there isn't a good design for anything that could have stopped below the elbow, because of where the major nerves are. I guess the upside is that this hides a lot of the scarring.”

The fluorescent lights of the lab highlighted his scars in stark relief, rough lines and dips across the paler skin of his arm fading into white marks against the tan of his shoulders and chest, a map of rugged terrain spreading out across the top of his back, the nape of his neck. He knew, from what the surgeons said, that a lot of the nerves in the arm and hand connected at a point just below the shoulder. They'd put a nerve block there after the amputation, stopping sensation completely while his wounds healed. He didn't miss the numbness, but it had been nice to have a solid week without pain. That was like a distant memory.

He was kind of distracted after that—Hunk and Pidge were both talking so quickly, Lance was lying on his back on the floor cycling his legs in the air, and Keith was hovering between him and his prosthetic. Shiro sat down on top of a lab table and closed his eyes, just zoned out for a bit. Everyone's voices were a buzz in the background and when he tried to focus on any single phrase it slipped away. Shiro wasn't relaxed, couldn't relax in a room full of people, but he didn't particularly want to move or do anything, either. Time must have passed, because then there was Keith's hand on his shoulder, Keith's voice in his ear telling him, “I have to get to class,” and Shiro blinked, chasing an image of bright sunlight and the taste of dust. Keith's eyes were dark with worry and very close.

“Yeah,” Shiro said, his tongue dry. “Class.” He was sitting on top of a table in the mechanical engineering lab. Hunk and Pidge were poking at his prosthetic, had it hooked up to some kind of robotic arm. Lance was there, too, now doing yoga atop a table on the other side of the room. “I should get back to work, too.”

“You all right?” Keith asked, before everyone else turned back to look at them. “Shiro?”

“Just tired, Keith.”

“Get some sleep tonight, will you?”

“I will if you will,” Shiro said, reminding Keith of their pact.

“I'll text you,” Keith said, and then, louder, “Time's up, guys. Shiro needs that back now.”

Hunk and Pidge turned; Lance pushed himself up out of a split. “We're not done yet,” Pidge said, and Hunk smacked them with Shiro's prosthetic, then blanched.

“Crap,” he said, “uh, sorry, that was just . . . automatic.”

Everything was quiet for a moment: Pidge leaning forward; Lance with a fist pressed to his mouth; Hunk red in the face and nervous looking; Keith ready to punch someone if need be. Shiro looked at them all, and at his prosthetic still dangling from Hunk's hand, at the snow still falling through the windows outside, and he surprised even himself by letting out laugh. Once he started, he couldn't stop, until everyone was cracking up. Keith, valiantly trying to stop laughing, handed him his clothes and Shiro pulled on his undershirt, pressed the thin cotton to his eyes. Pidge took off their glasses and then turned and put their face into Hunk's quaking shoulder. Lance, poor kid, was flat on the floor again, clutching his stomach.

“Too much,” Lance said. “Too much, we're all too sleep-deprived for this, everything is hilarious and I can't handle it.”

“Your face,” Pidge moaned, shaking with laughter. “Hunk, that was priceless.”

“I'm sorry,” Hunk laughed, “really.”

“You're all idiots,” Keith declared, but he was grinning. Just for a split-second, when no one but Shiro was looking, but it happened. It happened, and it was seared into Shiro's memory like a photograph, blotting out dirty sand and the red-brown stain of blood on canvas.

 

 

**[October—fall semester, this year]**

Allura's running on four hours of sleep when she steps into the lab on a Wednesday morning, the second week of October. Fall Break is fast approaching which means she's going to lose her research assistant for half a week, and there's so much to be done before Pidge takes off on whatever roadtrip they have planned this time. Not that Pidge drives, which Allura feels is for everyone's benefit. But the point stands that Pidge will be gone, somewhere off into the rural highways, and Allura will be here, holed up in the lab at all hours of the day. October always goes by too quickly. One of her lab's major grants is up at the end of the month and Coran hasn't said anything but she knows he's counting on her to come up with something to pitch to the foundation, something to get them more money. Coran himself, of course, is gallivanting off to his home country for the break, nevermind that it's only four days long and he has half the world to travel.

“Oh, good, you're here,” Pidge says by way of greeting. The mice are spread out across their desk and Allura frowns briefly, wondering if they shouldn't be less blatant about displaying the spoils of their plunder from biological engineering across the way. But the mice look happy.

“How are things going, Pidge?”

“I think I finally figured out where we were going wrong. See, the luminosity values from this old equation don't account for the AGN levels that we'd be seeing in Seyfert galaxies. If we tweak them, adjust it down slightly, then we get—” Pidge typed a few quick keystrokes and the computer screen showed an animation of the galaxy bulging outwards. “That,” said Pidge. “That's what we were looking for.”

“Oh, that's wonderful. Save that. And brighten up the colours. The foundation's investors like that.”

“Will do.”

They work in companionable silence for a while, listening to the rain hissing down outside and some kind of acoustic boyband streaming from Pidge's phone, singing about being on fire. Allura hopes that's not a premonition. The calendar in the lab corner says it's been 82 days since Pidge set anything on fire. It's a record.

Allura writes up her report for the grant foundation, as well as a letter to the observatory Coran has promised to visit while faffing about in New Zealand. He'll be closer to Australia's Telescope Compact Array than the campus lab will ever come, by a long shot, and she desperately hopes that he might be able to get her an invite to their facilities in the winter, when the skies of the southern hemisphere will be clear. Two of the mice have climbed up to her desk and are sleeping peacefully next to her keyboard, pale pink and blue puffs, fur rising and falling softly as they breathe. Allura glances up to see the green one atop Pidge's head, and the yellow mouse hanging off the monitor. She jumps a little when the door opens but it's just Hunk, with an armful of food. Allura smiles. The Care and Feeding of one Pidge Holt, she's learned, is nearly a full-time job.

“Hello, Hunk,” she calls out.

“Hi, Allura. Hi, Pidge. Brought you both lunch.”

“Aren't you on shift?” Pidge asked.

“It was a weirdly slow day so my manager gave me the afternoon off. Which is great because now I get to tell your dad that yes, I did feed you, and also study for my fluid mechanics exam.” Hunk pulls out a stack of to-go containers and passes them around. “Leftovers from last night at closing, but still good,” he says. “Pidge, do you know when you'll be home tonight?”

“Probably around six?” Pidge guesses. “I'll be here until three and then I have some MATLAB shit to finish up with my study group.”

“Language, Pidge,” Allura says.

“Yes, mom,” Pidge retorts, and makes a face. “You know I hate MATLAB.”

“Yes, but you're so good at it.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere. Half your pad thai, though, will get you everywhere.”

“Well, that's not happening,” Allura says, and turns away to guard her noodles. For someone so small, Pidge eats an astonishing amount. The shirt they've got on today might well be one of Hunk's, hanging boxy around a thin torso, but despite the chill and the rain Pidge is wearing shorts, with white athletic socks pulled up over skinny legs. Allura thinks back to Shiro describing them as a “lax bro” and muffles her laughter with her hand. Then she remembers the sudden turn that conversation took, and the laughter stops. She'd said something wrong, that much was clear in retrospect. But what?

“Hey, if you have time later this week, come by my lab again,” Hunk says to Pidge.

“Why?”

“Those adaptive sensors we were working on last year, one of the post-docs took a look at them and had some ideas. Well, his ideas didn't really make sense, but I was talking it over with Shay and she pointed out that actually, we could make the process a lot faster if we changed up our materials. Part of the problem is trying to work with metal and make it mimic flesh, that's just not happening. Also, detailed metal fabrication is just too hard. We don't know anyone with access to the Annex, and I don't know about you but I can't afford an arc welder. But Shay knows someone with a 3D printer.”

“Oh, did she have ideas? Does she have things we can steal?” Pidge asks.

“Maybe, once the fiber lab is done with their end-of-semester exhibit. We should go scavenge, anyway.”

“Sensors?” Allura asks. “For what, Hunk?”

Hunk and Pidge exchange a glance. “For, uh, a prosthetic limb. Pidge and I have been trying to come up with a way to make better touch sensors, you know, something that would mimic regular reactions but built into the mechanics. Kind of a side project, not really for the university.”

“But that's wonderful,” Allura says, even as her mind is turning. How many people has she seen on campus with prosthetics? Well, all right, several, but how many are also in this small group of people, each no more than a few degrees removed from the other? It's possible that Hunk knows Shiro, and she knows that Pidge at least knows who Shiro is; it's possible that the two of them can tell her something more about him, something that will explain why their conversations keep going wrong. Shiro never answered her last text message.

“Hunk and his bleeding heart,” Pidge sniffs, turning away to fiddle with a line of code.

“Don't act like you weren't all over it,” Hunk says. “Tech geek.”

“Math nerd.”

“Children,” Allura says, holding her hands out. “Please.”

“It's just that we spend a lot of time here only thinking about our grades, and making it to graduation. I wanted to make something that would outlast all that, you know?” Hunk pulls up a stool next to Allura. “Something that would actually improve things for someone, or, who knows, with 3D printing, maybe a lot of people.”

“Your ideals will be your downfall,” Pidge calls out, their back still turned.

“Pidge,” Allura says, “I've seen you with the mice. You've _named_ the mice. You're fooling precisely no one with your 'cynical scientist' act.”

“Hmph,” Pidge says, but good-naturedly, conceding their loss.

“I don't suppose you have a secret doctorate in neurology?” Hunk asks Allura, who shakes her head. “Yeah, I didn't think so. We could use a hand but none of my professors really work on human-integrated mechanics. Pidge, why don't we have any friends who are pre-med?”

“Because pre-med majors have no friends.”

Allura laughs. “Not true,” she says. “My best friend and college roommate was pre-med. I think you're both just spending too much of your time here.”

“Here?” Pidge asks.

“The physics department. Get out more. See the world.”

“Do you want to see the world, Hunk?” Pidge asks.

“Right now, all I want to see is my bed. But I'll have to settle for my textbooks instead. Fall Break is for seeing the world.” Hunk pushes himself off the stool. “I have to go study,” he says to Allura. “And Pidge, I brought you lunch for you to eat, not just look at. And I mean eat it, you. Not the mice.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Pidge says, waving Hunk off. “I'll see you at home tonight. Good luck on your exam.”

“Thanks.” Hunk heads out, leaving Allura and her unasked, unaswered questions alone with Pidge. Which is, perhaps, the better arrangement; Pidge has far less qualms about talking about people behind their backs than Hunk does. Allura doesn't usually gossip, finds it distasteful, but growing up as a minor diplomat's daughter taught her that sometimes you just need information, and gossip can serve when other intelligence is unavailable.

“So this side project,” she says, going over to lean against the table, facing Pidge. “What kind of prosthetic? Leg?”

“No,” Pidge says. “Arm. From just below the elbow. And I don't know for sure but I think the guy's right-handed, so it would be nice to give him more fine-tuned control back for his dominant hand.”

“Is it bad, what he has now?”

“Not bad, just a bit outdated. The field of prosthetics moves fast, you know? I was reading up on it a lot last year, there've been a lot of developments just recently. And the one he has is probably like five years old, or at least that model is—I'm not sure when he started using it. Or, needing it, I guess.” Pidge spun around on their stool. “Do you ever think about what it would be like, to lose a limb?”

“No, I can't say that I do.”

“I think I'd rather lose a leg than an arm,” Pidge says. “But of course, that's because I use my hands for so much of what I do, and sitting down to do it wouldn't really change anything. Like, even if I had a really lousy prosthetic leg, I'd be okay. But then I think about what I would've been doing, to lose it in the first place, and I probably wouldn't be okay with that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I've played enough Call of Duty to recognise shrapnel scars. I mean, it's only a guess, but I think this guy didn't just get in a really bad motorcycle accident or something. Plus, he kind of zoned out for a while when Hunk and I were running some tests, and it seemed like he was somewhere else for a bit once he . . . woke up, or whatever the word is for when you're not asleep but might as well be.”

“So, you mean— Shell-shock?” Allura asks, and somewhere in the back of her mind an unpleasant thought starts to unravel.

“In this century, we call it PTSD,” Pidge retorts, and then grows more thoughtful. “Look, I probably shouldn't— This is all speculation. I probably shouldn't have said that, or anything. I trust you not to go spreading rumours, and it's not as if you know who I'm talking about, but still. Can we change the subject now?”

“Of course, Pidge. And I won't say anything.” Allura won't say that she does know who Pidge is talking about, that's for sure. She doesn't apologise for making Pidge betray confidences, apart from laying a hand on their shoulder as she goes to clean up from lunch. She got what she wanted, or what she thought she wanted. Now she has to figure out what to do with it.

 *

It takes her a while, nearly two full weeks, before she works up the nerve to text Shiro again. Fall Break has come and gone. Shiro hasn't been showing up to yoga, not even to any of the other classes besides Saturday mornings. She checked the studio logs. And she hasn't seen him in the library, or their mutual coffeeshop downtown. His office location is listed on the history department's website but that seems a step too far, somehow. So Allura paces her lab, paces her apartment, braids her hair into ever more complicated patterns, and finally, on a Tuesday at ten o'clock at night, texts Shiro. “Will you get coffee with me after you teach tomorrow?” she asks. And then she waits.

Only about a minute passes before her phone lights up with a reply. It takes her longer than that to pick the phone up and see who the message is from. It's Shiro, one of the few contacts in her phone under only one name. “The café in the Dome, 11:15?” he's asked. “Yes,” she replies, and lets out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. This business of becoming friends with someone, she's decided—even when you're thirty—never gets any simpler. Everyone is born into their own little worlds, and many live and die in them, and trying to branch out, to reach out to someone and actually make a connection, that's the hardest thing you can do. Allura's mother passed away when she was still in high school, and her father was killed in a workplace accident when she was in college. Grief, afterwards, drove her away from a lot of people. The only one she's really confided in since then has been Coran, who was a friend of her father's and always around when she was growing up, like some kind of weird unrelated uncle, bringing strange and potentially hazardous gifts from all corners of the globe. She can still remember the sound of her mother's laughter when Coran brought her a terrarium of live lizards. The lizards had basked in the California sunshine of their patio all summer, sleeping under the poppies and eating the bugs.

When the people you've trusted most are gone, Allura thinks, it becomes easier to just keep everyone at arm's length. To talk about your coursework, your research, your annoying neighbours, nothing that reveals anything of yourself. That's how she's made it through four years already of a Ph.D. program without any real friends. And she's not even entirely sure why she's chosen Shiro to be the exception to all that, other than that the look in his eyes when she'd first spoken to him had been so genuine and unguarded, just for the briefest of moments, hardly even one full breath. And she'd quite like to see that look again.

The next morning, she gets to campus a few minutes before eleven. The weather's turned cold. The grass is wet from last night's rain; the trees are heavy with colour, amber-gold and red. Allura crosses over to the Arts Quad, sees the white of the Dome atop the art history building shining in the early sun against a cloudless blue sky. It's the kind of day that only comes once in a rare while—a good omen, if you believe in them. She goes up to the third floor and finds a seat at one of the small tables inside, sits down with a view of the door. While waiting, she half-heartedly does the crossword, keeping an eye on the people coming and going. Eleven-fifteen passes with no sign of Shiro. Allura is starting to pack up her things when he comes in, his hair in disarray as if he was running, the white streak in front standing on end.

“Hi,” she says, to give him a chance to catch his breath, and sits back down. He stays standing.

“Hi,” he says back, looking down at her, and then around the space. “Do you think— I prefer that table, do you mind?” He points at a table tucked in against the wall, away near one of the shelves of magazines.

“Oh, sure.” Allura follows Shiro to the table, hangs back a step as she realises why he would prefer it, and lets him sit with the shelf at his back before sliding into the chair across from him.

“I'm sorry I'm late,” he says, tugging his jacket off. “One of my students wanted to talk after class.”

“Don't worry about it, Shiro. Please. I spent a few minutes more doing the crossword, that's all.”

“How's it going?”

“Not terribly. I can usually manage Wednesdays. I'm stuck on some of the downs, though. Do you want to have a look at it while I get us coffee? My treat, this time, I insist.” Allura leaves him with her pen and the paper. While she stands in line at the counter she thinks about what Pidge said. Shell-shock, or PTSD. Now that she's looking for it, little signs are becoming clear. Allura pays for their coffees and returns to the table, hoping she's given Shiro enough space to gather himself together without it being obvious that that's what she was doing.

“Between the two of us, we should be able to finish this,” Shiro says as she hands him his coffee. “Thank you.”

“Thank you for meeting me,” Allura says, pulling her chair closer. “I'd been wanting to see you.”

Shiro ducks his head. “I don't think yoga is really my thing,” he says, inhaling the steam from his cup.

“No, I didn't mean it that way. I'm not going to strong-arm you into continuing with Arus's classes—she's a bit much, even for me. Did you win your bet with your friend?”

“What?”

“You said your friend was blackmailing you into going to yoga.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Shiro takes a sip of coffee. “We weren't really betting anything. Actually, Keith could probably get me to do far stupider things than yoga with very minimal effort. Not that yoga is stupid. Keith just has . . .” Shiro flexes his hands slowly against the sides of his cup. “I'm sorry, it's been a long morning. I'm not really making sense today.”

“You don't have to apologise. Do you want to go?” Allura asks.

“No. No, if it's all right with you, I'd like to stay.”

“Please do.”

They sit together without speaking, drinking coffee and silently trading the pen back and forth until they've completed the crossword. Only then does Allura look up to study Shiro's face again—the tired lines beneath his eyes, the faint scar on his right ear and the larger one across his nose, the strong line of his jaw above the collar of his shirt. She wonders what he sees when he looks in the mirror. She wonders what he sees when he looks at her.

“I said something wrong last time,” she says, when the coffee in her cup has gone cold. “I don't know what it was, and I didn't mean to. I'm sorry, Shiro.”

He lifts his head from the paper and looks at her but doesn't quite meet her eyes. “You didn't.”

“No, I did. I tried to find you afterwards but one of the lectures must have just let out. I couldn't see you in amongst all the undergrads. For someone so tall, I'd think you would stick out more.” Allura smiles, teasingly. Shiro doesn't react. She sighs. “Shiro, please. I'd like to talk about it, but only if you're willing to.”

He's quiet, spinning her pen idly in the fingers of his left hand. Allura thinks about what Pidge said, about dexterity and dominant hands and the human body's amazing capacity to adapt. “Can we not?” Shiro asks. His fingers tremble and he drops the pen.

“Of course,” Allura says.

“Not right now,” Shiro says, and puts his hands under the table in a motion that would look casual if she weren't paying such close attention. “I appreciate the apology but honestly if we get into it now, I'm going to be useless for the rest of the day.” He smiles at her. “And I still have papers to grade. So, call it a truce?”

“Truce,” Allura agrees.

“Thank you.”

“I may be useless today anyway,” she says. “Coran sent me home last night with far too much food, and then I ate all of it. I think I want to just sleep for a week.”

“That's called hibernation,” Shiro replies, taking the bait of an easier conversation. “A habit common amongst graduate students.”

“Yes, well, never let it be said that I've strayed from upholding expectations.”

They share a laugh over that, if only a small one, and Allura turns their talk to lighter things: the music playing in the café, the mice she and Pidge have adopted, how much of one's stipend it is acceptable to spend on fancy cheese. Shiro doesn't put his hands back into view but he does lean back in his chair a bit, and get colour high on his cheeks, and smile from time to time when she catches his eyes. So all in all, it's a success, or as much of one as they can manage for the time being. It's only October, after all. The month might be over before they know it, but they still have the rest of the year.

 

 

**[April—spring semester, one year ago]**

Hunk's alarm went off at five o'clock in the morning. He groaned and flung an arm over his eyes, blocking out the first light of dawn, yellow-grey through his curtains. The sun wouldn't be fully up for another hour but he needed to start his day. He promised Lance that he'd help on some odd-job, picking up something from a warehouse—honestly Hunk hadn't paid much attention to the details. Lance worked about five jobs at any given time, filling in the hours around lifeguarding with whatever he caught wind of. Forcing himself out of bed, Hunk stretched and tugged the curtains open. It was a foggy morning though it would probably clear up later. This was the sort of morning he used to love, back in Hawai'i, but these days it mostly made him want to stay in bed.

“Pidge,” he called, stepping into the hall. “Up and at 'em.” Hunk opened Pidge's door and let his eyes adjust to the darkness from blackout curtains covering the windows. Pidge was a small lump under the quilt. That was good; that meant Pidge had actually made it to bed last night. “Wakey wakey.”

“Mmmph.” The lump on the bed shifted.

“Pidge, Pidgey, Pidgeoto,” Hunk sang.

“Go away.”

“Wake up.”

“No.”

Hunk flopped onto the bed. “Yes,” he said, and leaned across what he guessed was the lower half of Pidge. A small foot kicked him, so he must have guessed right. “We promised Lance we'd help him out, remember? Come on. If you're in the kitchen in five minutes, I'll make you breakfast.”

Pidge groaned and kicked Hunk again, so he got up. Whistling, he moved into the kitchen, flicking on the lights as he went until the whole apartment was bright. It took Pidge a predictable seven minutes to come shuffling into the kitchen, still wrapped in a quilt, hair sticking out at odd angles. “Morning, sunshine,” Hunk said, and slid them a plate of eggs and toast.

“You're disgustingly cheerful for this hour,” Pidge said, their voice muffled by the quilt. “It's unnatural.”

“Maybe if you went to bed before four a.m., you'd be cheerful too.”

“The world may never know.” Pidge's head finally emerged from the bedding. They blinked and winced at the light, and ate their eggs with one hand over their eyes, elbow propped up on the table. Hunk poured coffees into thermoses, three of them: one for Pidge, one for himself, plus one for Lance. Patting Pidge on the head, he went to take a quick shower. By the time Pidge—marginally more awake—rounded the corner to the bathroom, Hunk was dressed and brushing his teeth. Rather than using words, Pidge made a shooing motion and, laughing, Hunk moved to finish in the kitchen sink, giving them the bathroom.

Lance pulled up to the curb in a massive old truck. He leaned out the window and Hunk caught a glimpse of him through the curtains, sleeves rolled up, cap on backwards, one brown arm hanging down over the door as if it weren't forty degrees outside. “Hey, losers,” Lance yelled up at their window. “Get in, we're going shopping.”

“I never agreed to this,” Pidge muttered, as Hunk slowly steered them down the steps and up to the door of the truck's cab. Lance leaned across and pushed the door open, revealing a long bench seat.

“Hop in,” Lance said. “And you did agree to it. I have it on tape.”

“No one uses tapes anymore, Lance.”

“Killjoy. Just you wait, I'll show you my tape collection someday and prove you wrong. Now budge over, let Hunk in.”

They sat three in a row, Lance driving, Pidge in the middle, Hunk on the other end. The warehouse that Lance was driving them to was an hour away, over in the next county, somewhere up along the lake. Pidge started to doze off before they even made it out of town, head lolling onto Hunk's shoulder. It was quiet for a while. They coasted down away from campus, through the residential area, past the local high school. The landscape opened up to rolling fields, cows steaming damply in the early morning. They passed miles of fencing and trees just starting to show new green.

The single-lane highway curved around the lake and started to climb up the ridge. Lance gave the truck a little more gas and it shuddered, the engine protesting. As he reached down for the gearshift, his hand grabbed Pidge's knee instead. Pidge yelped and jerked their knee away, elbowing Hunk in the side and kicking Lance in the process. The truck swerved dangerously until Lance caught the steering wheel again and found the shifter.

“Sorry, sorry! It was an accident, I swear!” Lance said, pushing the truck's engine, trying to get it up the hill. “Your knobby knees are in the way.”

“Keep your hands to yourself!”

“As if I want to get all close and personal with you! No offense, Pigeon, but you're not really my type.”

“Asshole,” Pidge said, hitting Lance again.

“Hey! Now who's touching who?”

“Please stop before you crash and kill us all,” Hunk pleaded, his hands over his eyes.

“He started it!”

“I did not!” Lance protested. “I was just trying—” he cut off as he wrenched the truck back into its lane. “I was just trying to shift gears. I'm not used to driving this truck, everything's in a different place.”

“Lance, have you ever driven this kind of truck before?” Hunk asked. Lance was quiet. Hunk groaned.

“No sweat, man, I know what I'm doing.”

“Doubtful,” Pidge sniffed.

“Do you know what the kids back home used to call me?”

“Moron?” suggested Pidge, which earned them a hand over the mouth from Hunk.

“The tailor.”

“That . . . really has nothing to do with driving a truck,” Hunk said, and then swore when Pidge bit his hand.

“No, you guys,” Lance swerved to avoid a pothole. “It's because of how I thread the needle.”

“Yeah, still not getting it,” said Hunk. Pidge was too busy wiping their mouth on their shirt.

“Because of how—” Lance started, and then shook his head. “You know what, never mind.”

They came to the top of the ridge and started the long, slow switchback down to the level of the lake. In the early morning hour there was hardly any traffic on the roads. Pidge, arms folded across their chest, was trying to achieve the impossible on a bench seat: sit in the middle and not touch anyone else. After a few miles of suffering in silence, Hunk leaned across and put on the radio. While fiddling with the dial, he surreptitiously nudged Pidge with his leg and Pidge nodded, shifting closer.

They'd figured it out, after a few awkward mishaps in the first days of living together: Hunk was one of the only people, outside of immediate family, that Pidge didn't actually mind being close to. There wasn't any traumatic backstory or secret explanation. Pidge just didn't like touch. Or people. So putting the two together was a recipe for disaster. Introducing Lance into the equation meant another variable, and a particularly tactile variable, too.

The other part of that equation was that Lance, on a good day, was prone to flirting with just about everyone. And Pidge, on a good day, could just ignore it. But running on one hour of sleep meant that their defenses were down, their perception filters were off. Pidge knew Lance's touches didn't mean anything, not among friends. But still they couldn't stop the flinch, or the shame that followed after. Normal people didn't jump every time their friends messed around with them. Normal people didn't have such a hang-up about things that everyone did: holding hands, linking arms, leaning into each other on the couch late at night. Sleeping in the same bed. Sleeping together.

Pidge curled in on themself and tried to concentrate on the music instead. It was something folky, mandolin and guitar and a woman's voice, bright-sounding for the brightness of an early morning. Lance's fingers were drumming along on the steering wheel. Slowly, very slowly, Pidge reached out and poked him in the side. Nothing happened for a second. And then, still staring straight ahead, eyes on the road, Lance grinned.

By the time they got to the warehouse the sun was fully up and the mist was starting to clear, turning the hazy morning into a beautifully blue-sky spring day. Lance directed them around to the side door by the loading dock and walked in with a swagger while Hunk and Pidge hid their laughter behind their hands. But sure enough, Lance was their expected delivery boy and in short order they were all carting old electronics out to the truck. VCRs, '80s computer parts, absurdly heavy television sets—all manner of outdated technology. “What are you doing with all this?” Pidge asked. Lance shrugged, a difficult feat when carrying a television half as tall as him, and three times as wide.

“No idea,” he said. “I'm just the delivery boy. Someone in maintenance sent around a memo looking for transportation and I know a guy with a truck and needed the cash, so here we are.”

“Do we get any of that cash?” Hunk asked from behind an armful of camcorders.

“No, but you get the pleasure of my company,” Lance said.

“Great,” said Pidge, straining to shove a computer tower onto the truck's lift-gate. “Just what I wanted.”

“Right?” said Lance. “Come on, lots more to go.”

Groaning, Pidge turned to follow. “Next time, Hunk,” they said, “I'm only available for warehouse duty if whatever we're transporting is 1) edible or 2) weighs less than twenty pounds.”

“Lightweight,” Hunk said, nudging them in the ribs with an elbow. “And I fed you breakfast already.”

“First breakfast.”

“What, you want second?”

“Obviously, yes.”

“Well, maybe Lance and his cash will treat us after.”

“One can only hope.”

“Less talking, more carrying!” Lance shouted from the loading dock then, and Pidge and Hunk resigned themselves to a day of sore backs and tired legs, and went back for another load. As Pidge passed Lance, arms full of coaxial cable, Lance leaned over and whispered, “If you see anything you like, no one will miss it. I know what a little tech geek you are. There's gotta be something here that will catch your eye.”

It was impossible to punch him without dropping their load, so Pidge just stuck out their tongue at Lance. But they had to concede the title when, half an hour of carrying later, Pidge unearthed a Commodore 64. Lance, whistling, kept his back turned while Pidge stashed it beneath the seat in the truck, and then stuck out his hand for a high-five. Rolling their eyes, Pidge gave it to him. The touch was brief, dusty and warm and somehow okay.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So . . . it's been a million years. Or like, several months, at least. I'm sorry. My real-life obligations are kind of ridiculous these days and I hardly have time to sleep, let alone write Voltron fic. But season 3 (or half of it) came out and it was wonderful and I wanted to update this fic and say hey, it's still a thing. I'm still working on it. The next chapter is actually about halfway done, and the one after that is planned out, so if I could only find the time to work on it, I can have more for you sometime before the next solar eclipse. 
> 
> No, just kidding, it won't take that long. But still, I'm sorry it's taken me ages to update, and reply to comments. I'm going on the job market this year, and finishing my dissertation, and everything's sort of terrible in academia-land. But I'm hoping to use this as an escape so it won't be so long until you hear from me again. Until then, thank you for reading, for commenting, and for supporting this story!
> 
> Three other notes: Bonus points to anyone who knows what Pidge is listening to in the lab, haha. I really love writing Shiro & Allura just talking about life together. Also, the last scene is based on real experiences, so that was kind of fun to write.


	6. Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX

 

**[November—fall semester, this year]**

The week after Thanksgiving—American, not Canadian—sees Shiro awake at 4:30 in the morning, pacing his kitchen in wool socks and old army sweats, stressed. Outside the grass is covered by the thinnest snowfall. In just a few weeks the university will go on winter break and Shiro will stay, holed up in the library to work on his last few job applications and hate himself. The first part is a necessity, the second only a possibility, but it's a likely one. He’s applied to eleven positions already. If he gets even one call for more materials, or an interview, he thinks he might feel like it was worth it. But even those odds are against him.

He runs a hand through his hair, making it stand on end, and scowls at his face reflected against the dark of the window. “This is just stupid,” he says, and closes his blinds. That doesn't solve the problem. The problem is that he can't sleep. Can't seem to get his mind to shut off for more than five minutes. Given that it takes the average person fourteen minutes to fall asleep, and given that Shiro has always been behind the average on that one—above average in many of the ways that count, but behind on that one—five minutes is not nearly enough. As soon as he starts to find some quiet in his mind, thoughts intrude. How blissful it would be, he thinks, to simply stop thinking.

There are ways, of course, that have worked in the past. But that's something he tries not to let himself dwell on. Instead, he makes a cup of tea and settles back into bed, cross-legged, thumbing idly through the news on his phone. After a short debate with himself while his tea cools enough to drink, Shiro texts Allura. He's not expecting a reply until morning, just looking to vent over the absurdity of Ph.D. program deadlines and the unrelenting hell that is the academic job market, but not even a minute later she texts back. “What are you doing awake?” he sends, and then winces a little because emotion doesn't translate over text and that probably came off as demanding or critical rather than concerned.

“I have to go check on something in the lab,” Allura writes back.

Shiro notices that she does not ask him the same question. “At this hour?” he types. “It's not the safest time to be out.”

“I'll be fine, Shiro,” comes the reply. “Also, science waits for no man.”

“Or woman.”

“Yes, that too.” There’s a thumbs-up emoji at the end of the message.

Shiro goes back over to the window and lifts his blinds. The sky is clear, the moon low and cold. He knows he won't be able to fall asleep, not now with worrying on top of everything else. Not that there's any reason he should worry, beyond a general worry. It's not the safest time to be out but their city is also relatively safe even at odd hours of the morning, and Allura has probably done this before. He doesn't need to think so much about it. But he does, and so he hesitates only briefly before texting her to ask, “Would you mind some company?”

“Can't sleep?” she asks.

“No.”

“Well, come watch equation modeling. It always sends Pidge right to sleep.”

Shiro huffs a laugh.

“Meet me at University and South Hill?” comes Allura’s next message.

“I'll be there in five,” Shiro replies, and goes to swap out his sweatpants for jeans. He shoves a jacket on over his sweatshirt and laces up his boots, grabs his keys, and locks the door behind him before jogging down his house's steps to head out to the cross street near campus. Allura must live nearby, or perhaps she was already on her way up the hill. The first birds of morning start to sing as Shiro passes the bus stop and rounds the corner to see Allura silhouetted against the barest hint of brightness in the sky. She's bundled into a hat and long coat, mostly shapeless, but lifts a hand at him in greeting.

“Good morning,” she says when she draws near, and her cheeks are pink with cold.

“Morning,” Shiro says. “Not sure if it's good or not.”

“Debatable,” Allura agrees, “but there's time yet to make it so.”

“Make it so,” Shiro repeats, in a passable imitation of Picard’s voice, which gets a laugh from Allura.

They don't talk much as they climb the hill up to campus, taking the shortcut up the steps beside the long slope outside the library. The grass crunches underfoot, wet with dew and snow. The sky has turned the palest shade of blue and against the white cast of the quad Shiro can hardly even see the horizon line. Everything blends together. As they cross the street to the Engineering Quad and cut across the lawn to the Physics building, Allura reaches out and takes Shiro's hand. Her fingers must be cold against his prosthetic but he can't feel it. Their breath steams in the air and Shiro thinks about what it would be like if he hadn't lost his arm. If he could still feel touch like other people feel it. It's not something he normally lets himself think about and so it takes him by surprise, and he squeezes Allura's hand tighter, taking care not to crush it. His prosthetic does everything he needs it to, but not everything he wants. Allura squeezes back, and looks over at him with a smile. They are almost exactly the same height. Stray white curls have escaped her hat and blow across her face, brush the bridge of her nose where it’s flushed with cold, and Shiro finds himself wanting to smooth them back so instead he ducks his head and looks away.

When they get to the lab, Allura lets go of Shiro's hand and pulls off her coat, kicks off her snowy boots by the door. Her socks are pink. She pads across the floor to a computer and switches on the monitor while Shiro stands in the doorway, uncertain. He flexes the fingers of his prosthetic, feels the artificial joints move and shift, hears the rasp of metal as he twists his wrist. He thinks about Pidge and Hunk, and their offer to upgrade his tech. He thinks about what his doctors would say if he told them he was entrusting his very expensive arm to a couple of college kids and an unsupervised lab experiment.

“Take off your boots and get over here,” Allura calls to him, so Shiro does. He leans in over her shoulder and watches the computer cycle through code. “Does this mean anything to you?” she asks.

“Not at all,” he says, and smiles. “But I'm assuming it does to you.”

“Well, somewhat. This is more of Pidge's responsibility but I felt badly asking them to come up here in the pre-dawn hours. Give me an analogue experiment any day. Much more interesting than digital ones, if you ask me.”

“An analogue model of the galaxy would take up an awful lot of space,” Shiro says.

“ _A_ galaxy, not _the_ galaxy,” Allura says. “There's a difference.”

“A difference big enough to let it fit in this room?”

“No,” Allura concedes. “Any galaxy that I work on would not fit in this room. Not even the smallest one.”

Shiro laughs. “Still,” he says, stretching his arms behind his back, “that would be something to see.”

“I'd settle for seeing a bigger telescope array installation on campus.” Allura sighs and drops down into a chair. “I know we have the money but it's not a priority, apparently. No matter how many letters I write. I'm fortunate that my advisor could get me some data from another array but honestly, it's a pain.”

“Why did you come here?” Shiro asks, and then makes a face as she raises an eyebrow at him. “I mean, there must have been universities with better facilities for your kind of research.”

“There are.” Allura pulls one leg up onto the chair, rests her chin on her knee. “This one had Coran. And also, a decent funding package.”

“Ah,” Shiro laughs, and sits down also. “Yes, that did it for me too.”

“Coran?”

“No,” he says, and nudges her chair with his foot, making it roll away. “Though one of these days, I'd like to meet him. After all the stories I've heard.”

“Well, if you're ever around here and see someone who looks vaguely like Nigel Thornberry, that's him.”

“Nigel Thornberry?”

“Did you never watch that cartoon?”

“Allura, I have no idea what 'that cartoon' even is.”

“Oh. Never mind, in that case. You'll meet him someday, I'm sure. He's become fairly elusive ever since his second book came out and he realised the university couldn't afford to not give him the contract additions he asked for.”

“Must be nice,” Shiro sighs, and slumps in his chair. “I'd settle for just making a tenure-track appointment.”

“You will,” Allura says, and though he's heard the same words from others and always shrugged them off, hers stick. Hers sound like a promise, and it's been a while since anyone but his parents or Keith had enough faith in him to make a promise.

Shiro ends up pacing around the lab while Allura works, his wool socks quiet on the linoleum floors. There’s no one to tell him off for not having proper footwear in the lab. The Physics lab doesn't have the best view on campus but he can see a couple of oak trees still hanging onto their dead leaves, shifting gently in the early morning wind. He should be thinking of something—his lesson plan, his to-do list, library books to search for, anything—but his mind is blank, like someone's wiped it until it's as clear as the sky outside. “Empty box mode,” his dad used to call it, when they'd be sitting side by side on the long flight over to Japan and Shiro would stare out the window blankly. Nothing going on outside, nothing going on inside. Shiro's spent a lot of time in an empty box. Airplanes, road trips, long stretches of downtime in the desert. It's somewhere in between deliberate and subconscious, the way his mind just seems to shut off for a while.

He can hear Allura humming, the noise her chair makes as it shifts on the floor, the soft whirr of computer fans. The high-pitched buzz of a fluorescent light on its last days before the bulb burns out. When she gets quiet he thinks she's probably looking at him, but if he turns to meet her gaze she'll have turned away and resumed typing again.

Time passes. Shiro falls asleep face-down on top of one of the lab tables, head pillowed on his arms, the locking mechanism of his prosthetic pressing into his face uncomfortably. He's too tired to care. He drifts in and out, half-dreaming something blurry and far away, memory blending with that one scene from _Star Wars_ with Luke rescuing Han from the Sarlacc and the sand pit. The air in the lab is cold and it's a confusing contrast, until Allura digs a blanket out from somewhere and drapes it over him. His limbs feel like lead and it's too much effort to speak, but he's grateful and hopes she knows it.

He wakes up more properly some hours later to Allura’s hand on his left elbow and pushes himself up groggily to look at her. She takes a step back. “I’m sorry to wake you,” she says. “It’s nearly seven, and the most eager of the undergrads usually start to arrive around seven-thirty. I thought you might like to . . .”

“Not be here,” Shiro says, the words thick in his mouth. He shifts into a more upright position, trying to be more alert. He’s not usually this slow to wake. Doesn’t usually sleep on his stomach in front of people, either. Doesn’t usually sleep in front of people, period. “Right.”

“Breakfast?” Allura asks him, like everything is completely normal. “I’m starving.”

“Have you been working all this time?” Shiro stretches out his arms and suppresses a groan. His right shoulder and bicep are twinging from too many hours with the prosthetic attached.

Allura shakes her head. “I fell asleep too, about half an hour ago.”

Now that he’s looking for it, Shiro can see that her hair is mussed, one side flattened a bit in what was once, probably, a neat ponytail. “Breakfast sounds he good,” he says, pushing off the table and exhaling as his feet hit the floor. Everything hurts. And yet, he feels more rested than he has in months.

They end up in a tiny cafe in town, just past the edge of campus. The place is bright with early-morning sun, the windows fogged up against the cold air outside. The tables are tiny and they don’t quite fit, both as tall as they are, but Shiro is tucked in against a wall covered with prints of absurdly dramatic 1950s pulp-noir novel covers and he’s watching Allura’s hair shine in the sun. She has her back to the door and he doesn’t understand how she’s able to sit there, unflinching, as people walk in and out of the cafe. When the waitress brings them coffees, Allura flashes her a smile that’s almost too bright and Shiro swears he sees the waitress blush before she turns away.

“Do you come here often?” Shiro asks, prying just a little bit.

“Oh, yes,” she says. “Most mornings when I have to go into the lab early. They make marvelous French toast.”

“I see.”

Shiro watches the waitress again when she comes with their food and sure enough, the girl is a little bit flustered in front of Allura in a way that she isn’t when she sets down his plate of bacon and toast in front of him. He’s not entirely sure how he feels about that. It’s even harder to think clearly when Allura turns her smile on him and starts asking about his plans for the upcoming winter break. It may still be November but classes are over soon, and the two-week stretch of exams always flies past, and then the university closes for the season. He’s going home to visit his parents for a bit, just around the holidays, and plans to spend the rest of the break in either the library or his apartment.

“We should meet up again after classes end,” Allura says to him, and Shiro finds himself smiling back at her without really consciously choosing to.

“All right,” he says. “I’d like that.”

 

 

**[May—spring semester, two years ago]**

The weather was absurdly nice on the day that Pidge finished the last exam of their first year. The sky ocean-blue, clouds huge and puffy, light breeze pushing through the trees just beginning to bloom on the walk alongside the main campus library. Pidge put their hands behind their head and stretched back, turned their face to the sun. After spending almost the entire week in the library, fresh air was a relief. Also, they'd made it. The year was over. That was a relief, too.

Pidge wandered over to the lawn of the main quad, not really thinking about anything. Hunk should've been finishing an exam at the same time, and then they could go and celebrate. Some students were out throwing a frisbee around, or lounging under the trees, already celebrating. Near the steps of the Sociology & Anthropology building a small group had gathered around a black lab puppy wearing a service vest but clearly off duty, if the way it was rolling around in the grass was any indication. Pidge snapped a photo and texted it to Hunk: “Come pet immediately.” Then they walked up to the group and crouched down, stuck out a hand.

“Is it all right to pet your dog?” they asked, to the group in general, since it wasn't obvious whose dog it was.

“Sure, she's on a break now, so go ahead,” said a blonde girl with a ponytail.

“Thanks.” Pidge let the puppy sniff the back of their fingers and then scratched under her chin. She flopped down in the grass at his feet, tongue sticking out. Laughing, Pidge rubbed her small belly, fingers tracing the edge of the vest. The puppy licked him and rolled over, then trotted away to the next person in the circle. Who was, Pidge discovered upon looking up, Keith Kogane.

“Oh, hey,” they said.

Keith looked up and frowned momentarily. “Pidge, right?” he said slowly.

“Yep.” They'd only met once, a week or so ago, when Pidge had been walking with Hunk across campus and Hunk had flagged down Keith for nothing more than to say hello. “So, you like dogs?”

“Really?” Keith asked, raising an eyebrow, and then gesturing down to where the puppy was currently gnawing on his hand. “You have to ask?”

“I don't know, you seemed more like a cat person.” Pidge shifted closer until they were back within petting distance.

“I like cats. But I always wanted a dog, growing up.”

“Your parents wouldn't let you get one?”

“No.”

“Yeah, mine either. Though, to be fair,” Pidge said, waving a piece of grass in front of the puppy's nose, “neither my brother nor I are all that great about taking care of things, so it was probably a smart move to say no pets. I think Matt's killed about fifty houseplants by now.”

Keith didn't smile—Pidge checked—but his face did lighten a bit from its usual frown.

“So,” Pidge said, drawing out the syllable. “What are you up to?”

“Petting this dog.”

“Obviously. I meant in general, this afternoon, this weekend, whatever.” Pidge waved their hand. “In your life.”

“That’s not any of your business.”

“Okay,” Pidge said slowly, drawing the word out. “Pretend you’re an average human. What are you up to this weekend?”

Keith was quiet for a moment. “I have to do laundry,” he said. “Which will be a pain, since everyone in the dorm does laundry on the weekend. Also I have my last exam on Tuesday.”

“Are you not . . . going home for the summer?” Pidge asked. They’d never been great about letting tact supersede curiosity. Keith gave them a flat look. “It’s only that I think most kids would just wait to do laundry at home.”

“I’m not sure when I’m leaving campus,” Keith said, his gaze back on the puppy, whose owner was now sitting in the grass some distance from them talking to a friend of hers.

“Oh.” Pidge waved a stem of grass in front of the puppy. “Well, hey, why don’t you come over and hang out with Hunk and me?”

“. . . Why?”

“Wow, Keith. Suspicious much?” Pidge asked. “Because you can do laundry at our place, if you need a reason. We have a washer and dryer in the basement of our house. And I know for a fact that Hunk did laundry already this week, so there won’t be much competition. Also because you look like you could use a break.”

Keith made some kind of noncommittal noise and shifted in the grass.

“Just say yes,” Pidge prompted.

“Yes?” Keith responded, the inflection not quite right for commitment but Pidge would take it.

“Great,” they said. “Also great, Hunk is here. About time!” they called out, as Hunk came over. “You have been missing a great dog.”

“Sorry, sorry, I just got out of my orgo exam.” Hunk was panting a bit as he flopped down onto the grass. “Hey, Keith! Good to see you.”

“Hi,” Keith said.

Pidge thought he still looked vaguely confused so they prompted, “Keith’s coming over this weekend. Tomorrow.” Turning to Hunk, they added, “You’re cooking, right?”

“Of course! As if I’d miss the chance to cook for my buddy Keith. What do you like? I don’t know many Korean dishes but I could look up some recipes.”

“Um. Anything’s fine,” Keith said.

“Great. But you know what that means, Pidge,” said Hunk.

“What?”

“You have to clean up before tomorrow.”

“What?!”

“Your latest project is all over the living room. By dinner time tomorrow, it needs to not be.”

Pidge groaned. “Are you serious?” they asked. “Keith won’t mind a few circuit boards on the sofa.”

“And the floor, and the table, and the countertops, and—” Hunk said, counting off with his fingers.

“All right, all right, fine!” Pidge threw their hands out to stop him. “I’ll clean up. Just come over, all right, Keith?”

Keith nodded. “If you’re sure,” he said.

“We’re sure,” said Hunk, throwing an arm around Pidge. “See you then.”

*

Pidge was not waiting by the window when six o’clock on Saturday evening came. They weren’t. They just happened to be watering a plant on the windowsill that overlooked the front door at the same time that Keith was meant to be arriving, that’s all.

When Keith did appear at the edge of their block, a bag of laundry over his shoulder and detergent in his hands, Pidge scrambled down the steps to throw open the house’s front door. “You made it!” they said. “Come on in. Do you want to eat first, or do laundry first?”

“I don’t know. Laundry, I guess?”

“Okay. This way.” Pidge led Keith down the hall to a door in the back of the house where the laundry room was. “I brought down quarters in case you didn’t have any.”

“Oh. I didn’t— I’ll pay you back.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Pidge perched atop a dryer while Keith loaded his wash, trying not to stare but also curious. Keith’s wardrobe seemed fairly monochrome and they wanted to know if that was just coincidence, in all three times they’d run into each other, or if it held true for the whole contents of his closet. It seemed that it did. Almost everything going into the wash was white, grey, or black, or occasionally red. Keith didn’t say anything as he sorted clothing, and Pidge wasn’t sure if that meant their mutual silence was comfortable or uncomfortable. Probably a bit of both.

When they went upstairs to the apartment, Hunk was in the kitchen cooking. “Are you hungry?” Pidge asked, tugging Keith in the direction of the kitchen by his sleeve. “I’m hungry.”

“You’re always hungry,” Hunk said. “You’re like a bottomless pit. I don’t know how you’re still so small.”

“I am not small,” Pidge said.

“You kind of are,” said Keith, and then looked startled like he hadn’t meant to speak. Hunk laughed while Pidge glared.

“Keith, welcome,” Hunk said, gesturing around the kitchen. “You fit right in. Make yourself at home. Dinner’s almost ready.”

“Thanks,” Keith said after a moment, and slowly pulled his sleeve free from Pidge’s fingers.

Hunk watched as some of the tension dropped from his shoulders, and nudged Pidge, who was still pouting over being called small. Look, he tried to say, raising an eyebrow; You did a good thing. You did well.

 

 

**[December—fall semester, this year]**

Shiro's dad dies in December. The call comes in while he's lecturing on a Thursday afternoon, the last week before exams. When he goes into the hall after class to check his messages and hears his mother's voice, crying, he sinks down to his knees in the middle of the hallway. It takes a few moments before he's able to stagger up and push his way into the bathroom, and he's almost certain some of his students saw him but he can't bring himself to care. All he can do is hang his head over the sink and try not to be sick as the voicemail cuts off mid-sentence. With cold water running over his hands Shiro tries to remember how to breathe, which shouldn't be complicated but suddenly, really is.

Later, he'll always feel ashamed of how long it takes him to call his mother back.

She's still crying, and he's probably crying, but they don't comment on it. Shiro just tells her that he'll come home as soon as he can, and that he loves her, both of which are obvious and therefore pointless to say.

The sky is high and grey as he walks back to his apartment, the air sharp. Standing at the crosswalk, Shiro watches cars speed past and blur together. His limbs seem to belong to someone else, or no one, when he steps forward. The routine actions of unlocking the door, climbing the steps, unlocking another door, everything is automatic and unfeeling.

It starts to snow while Shiro is waiting for the Greyhound website to load. The trip back to Toronto should only take about five hours, but depending on traffic, connections, border crossings, sometimes it can take as many as twelve. He's dreading it for all the wrong reasons. He should be afraid to go home because he'll have to face a grieving mother and the absence that was his dad, not because he hates long bus rides.

Sometimes when everything, even something as simple as typing in your credit card information, becomes difficult, you just want to talk to someone. Or, not even talk, just listen. Shiro doesn't want to listen to his mother crying—because he is a terrible son, apparently—and he knows Keith is still in class, so he calls the only other person he can think of.

Allura picks up after the third ring and he can almost hear the smile in her voice. It should help, and it does, but it also makes his heart seize a little bit more. “Hello, Shiro,” she says. “How are you?”

“I'm— I'm fine,” he says, and swallows hard. “What are you doing right now?”

“Just getting ready to leave the lab. I've been here since eight this morning and I'm starving. Say, would you like to get lunch? Or is it dinner? I have no idea what time it is, actually.”

“It's almost four.”

“Well, that's just inconvenient. Neither one nor the other, and there's not a handy portmanteau for this like there is for brunch.”

“No,” Shiro agrees. He walks over to his kitchen window and looks out. Snow is falling wetly, starting to cover the lawn, the sidewalk, the cars parked along his street.

“Would you like to get a nonspecific meal with me, then?”

“I would, but . . .”

“It's all right,” Allura says when the silence drags on too long.

“No, it's only that . . . I have to go out of town. For a little while.”

“You're leaving today? Because I've just stepped outside and it's rather miserable out here, Shiro. I hope you're not planning on driving in this.”

“I have to go today. I'm, uh, trying to buy a bus ticket right now.” Shiro leans his forehead against the cold glass of the windowpane.

“When will you be back?”

“I don't know.”

“Exams start next week. Or do you not give exams to your students?"

“No, I do.” Shiro sighs. This isn't working. “Look, Allura, could you just . . . talk to me about something?”

“Of course, Shiro. What is it?”

“No, I mean, I don't care what, just please keep talking. About anything. Please.”

“Oh,” Allura says, and then, again, slower, “oh. All right.” And she tells him about Pidge's latest complaints about MATLAB, and all the money in the swear jar, and the mice that live in the lab, and how Coran keeps trying to set her up on dates only he calls them “diplomatic exercises,” as if she doesn't have enough diplomacy already, as if anyone working in Coran's lab could get by without diplomacy. Also, she is literally the daughter of a diplomat. She tells Shiro about the boxes that came back from New Zealand with Coran and the radioactive rocks that are now spread across the lab which he's assured them are perfectly safe but the Geiger counter seems to disagree, and how ever since then the coffee from the lab break room has tasted slightly off.

“Next time I see you, if you're glowing, he and I are going to have words,” Shiro says to that, and Allura laughs a little.

“My knight in shining armour,” she says.

They're both quiet for a bit. Shiro flexes his fingers, switches the phone to his left hand. Allura hums something quietly, a tune he doesn't know.

“Shiro,” she says, “forgive me for asking, but I'm concerned. Are you all right?”

He closes his eyes. “No,” he admits.

“Is there— Can I do anything for you? I could keep talking, if it helped. There are too many shenanigans in this lab to number so I'm sure—”

“My dad died,” Shiro says, interrupting her. The words come out all at once, too quickly. “He, uh, he had a heart attack. This morning.”

“Oh, Shiro.”

He hears her sigh.

“Shiro, I'm so sorry.”

“Yeah,” he says, and bites his lip.

“I know it doesn't help but I am. I mean it. I don't know what you're feeling, because I'm not you, but I have— I’ve been there before. My father died when I was in college.”

He hadn't known. How could he have known? They've barely been friends for more than a month or two. That isn't the sort of thing you tell everyone as soon as you meet them. “I'm sorry too,” he says. “For your loss.”

“Thank you.”

Another silence stretches between them.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” Allura asks.

“Not really,” Shiro says. “No.” The snow outside has started to build up on the window-ledge. It's going to be a nightmare, taking the bus in this. “I should go,” he says finally. “I still have to buy my ticket.”

“No, you don't,” Allura says, her voice firm. “I'll drive you. You shouldn't have to make this trip alone.”

“Allura, that's— I can't ask you to do that. I'll be fine.”

“You will be, yes,” she says. “But I'm going to do it anyway. Where do you live? I'll come pick you up, I just need to get home first and get a few things together.”

“Allura—”

“Your address, Shiro. Tell me, or I'll have to call Pidge, and they'll have to call Lance, so Lance can ask Keith, and that is far too inefficient.”

So Shiro tells her his address, and they hang up. He spends about five minutes standing in his kitchen, phone in hand, staring out the window uselessly. And then Allura texts him, and keeps doing it, every few minutes as he's packing his bag. Normally text messages annoy him but for some reason these don't. At her reminder, he grabs something to eat out of the fridge—leftovers of some kind, he doesn't even taste them as he eats so he couldn't say what they are, or when he last cooked—and refills his water bottle for the drive. He shuts down his laptop and checks and double-checks the security on his apartment before heading down to wait just inside the house's front door.

If he had to guess, he would've expected Allura to drive something small and sporty, but an old-style Honda Cr-V covered in bumper stickers pulls up and flashes its lights instead. Shiro locks his house's front door and goes out into the storm, head ducked as the wind hits him. He has to push himself up to get into the truck and realises that Allura must have put a lift kit on it, which is an interesting conversation for another time. For now, he twists to put his bag in the backseat and says, “Thanks.”

Allura smiles at him. “You're welcome,” she says, and they set off. It's cold in the truck, as if the heater hasn’t kicked on yet, and Allura's wearing a coat and a massive scarf, her hair in a messy bun. She has a white streak of something—powder? paint?—across her cheek and Shiro wants to reach over and brush it away. He points it out to her instead and she groans and swipes at it with the edge of her scarf. “Plaster dust,” she explains. “Don't even ask me why a physics Ph.D. is working with plaster. I know it makes no sense.”

“Your lab seems to do it all.”

“We really do. Frankly I think I deserve more degrees than just the one, considering everything.”

It’s nearly dark outside as they leave the city behind them, sliding down the long ramp that takes the highway past The Heights and out along the lakeshore, into farmland. Allura is drinking coffee in a paper cup; it steams and fogs up the windshield. The wipers are loud against the silence that stretches between them and Shiro stares out at the blackness of the lake, dark and formless, the lights of the summer houses on its shore all out. Nothing reflects across the water. The road flattens out and Allura accelerates despite the bad weather. Shiro worries, for a moment, about someone who’s grown up in southern California driving in the snow, and then decides he doesn’t care. It’s hardly as if he could drive right now. His hands haven’t stopped shaking since he listened to his voicemail hours ago.

Allura punches a button on the dash and fiddles with a sliding switch, curses. “This heater’s always breaking when I need it most,” she says. Another button makes the stereo crackle on and she twists the tuner until it settles on one of the local stations, some song Shiro’s never heard before.

It’s easy enough to zone out, the road flashing darkly past, the truck’s headlights a dim glow ahead of them. Shiro tugs his scarf up over his nose and settles back into the passenger seat, tucks his hands under his armpits to warm them. On the radio now, [a man is singing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY5ywTvzO1Q), voice soft over guitar, “I guess I’m looking for the right way to do this,” and Shiro feels his eyes burning so he closes them. If this were a movie, this would be the part where he leans his head against the window, but in real life the truck is jolting around a corner and Allura is intent on the road ahead, not looking at him, and Shiro sinks down a little more. His knees knock into the dashboard. What is he going to do? How is he going to face his mother?

They’ve never been quite as close as Shiro was with his dad. He loves her, from a distance. She is the one who always made sure he was wearing a jacket when he left for school, who packed him countless careful lunches and sent snacks to all of his sports practices. She is caring in a practical way. When Shiro fell off his bike and skinned his knee, or burned himself setting off firecrackers in the driveway, she was the one who would clean him up. His dad was the one who would give him a hug, or tousle his hair, or just sit with him on the couch until they both fell asleep. Shiro can count on one hand the number of times he’s hugged his mother since coming back from Afghanistan. What will they do now, when they see each other? He flexes his hands, fingers digging into his sides. Will she look smaller than he remembers? His dad was sixty-four. It’s not fair.

Heart failure, the doctors said. But what does that even mean? Shiro will have his doctorate in a few months but he’s no doctor. He hadn’t even known his dad was sick. Thinking about it makes him feel vaguely sick and he reaches out and turns the radio volume up. The song’s changed but the tone is the same, sparse guitar in the background, a different man’s voice, rougher, singing about “the eve of destruction” in something that sounds like a [‘60s protest song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFZUDQ85bFU). In the ‘60s, Shiro’s parents were still in Japan. Hadn’t even met each other yet.

Shiro feels Allura looking at him and he sits up a little straighter, rubs his nose a little. “Sorry,” he says, “too loud?”

Allura shakes her head, both hands steady on the wheel. “No, it’s fine. I was just thinking that we might want slightly happier music.”

Shiro shrugs. “What’s the point?” he asks, which feels, as soon as he says it, incredibly childish. But once the words are out, there they are. No taking them back.

“Hmm.” Allura drums her fingers on the wheel. There aren’t any other cars around. The highway stretches out before them, leading them north to the border. “Well, I suppose that depends on what you want it to do for you.”

“I don’t want to think about anything.”

“And is it working?”

“Not really,” Shiro has to admit.

Allura takes her phone out of her pocket and unlocks it, tapping through screens one-handed until she pulls out her music player. “Plug this in?” she asks, handing it to Shiro, who finds the auxiliary cable hanging from the dashboard. The first minutes are just drums, guitar, synthesizers, with the volume turned up loud enough that the bass is thumping in the door against Shiro’s leg. He recognises Robert Smith’s voice with some surprise when it appears—The Cure is hardly what he’d choose as happier music—but [the song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZKh0q904is) works, somehow. Or, it doesn’t make him think of nothing, but his thoughts are displaced now. As if they’re someone else’s. Allura is singing along under her breath, driving more slowly now as the roads get worse. Snow is still falling, wet and grey.

By the time they make it to the border, upstream of Niagara Falls, it’s nearly midnight. Allura rolls down her window at the crossing point and cold air rushes in. The border patrol guard looks tired and irritable but doesn’t give them any particular trouble as he checks their passports and asks the usual questions. Where are you travelling to? How long will you be there? What is the purpose for your trip? Allura answers for Shiro, who can’t get the words out and can only nod along as she explains that there’s been a death in the family, and they’re not sure how long they’ll be staying but expect it to be a couple of days.

“Stay safe on the roads,” the guard warns, handing back their identification and papers.

“We will,” Allura assures him, and they pull away. Shiro unclenches his jaw. She waits until they’ve rounded a bend in the road before glancing over at him and asking, “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” he says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think I would— I should have handled that. I’m sorry for making you do it.”

“Shiro, you don’t have to apologise.”

“It’s not your responsibility.”

“It’s something I can do for you. Please let me do it.”

The road winds around Lake Ontario and Shiro stares out his window at the bleak, open darkness of the lake on their right. Sometimes the truck’s headlights catch on the tip of a wave, tossed up by the wind and the storm. One day changes into the next. The wind gusts across the road. It takes them another two hours to reach Toronto and by the time they get to the city Shiro thinks he should be prepared for what comes next. But he really, really isn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Season 4, you guys. Season 4.
> 
> Hi. I'm sorry it's been so long. I'm working on a few different fics right now, but more than that job applications are hell and I am in it/them. But I still have a lot of thoughts for this story and I've decided that I want to see it continue. Thank you, seriously, to those of you who have commented on this. I had been thinking for a while about not continuing this story, but knowing that there are at least some of you who are enjoying it and looking forward to more has kept me writing. I always love hearing your thoughts, here or on tumblr as @stick-around-town.
> 
> I watched "Sing Street" recently, can you tell? The Cure has snuck back into my life in a way that it hasn't been since I was in high school. I also like to imagine that Allura's "happy-sad" roadtrip playlist includes The Clash's "Lost in the Supermarket." Which is not at all an important detail to this story but there we are.
> 
> Up next: more sleepovers, awkward one-sided love in a flashback, and winter break shenanigans.


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